Covenant Page 19

  Casey Jeffs stood alone and immobile in the office of Kelvin Patterson, a towering hulk of a man dressed in blue overalls, his face half hidden by a mop of lank blond hair. Reverentially, he knelt down in front of the small altar and looked up at the towering chromed cross as he clasped his hands before him.

  “I din’ mean to cause trouble,” he whispered. “I din’ mean it.”

  Jeffs knelt for a long time, grinding his hands before him and closing his eyes tightly, as though the mere action of doing so could wipe away his anxiety and fear.

  “I din’ meant it,” he whispered again.

  “I know you didn’t, Casey.”

  Casey’s head jerked up as he gasped and leaped to his feet, and Patterson saw the flare of alarm in his bright blue eyes, the feeble mind behind them unable to account for Patterson’s sudden materialization. Patterson stepped from behind the altar and shook one of Casey’s giant hands in his. Casey stooped when upright, partly because of his height and partly because he had long taken to hiding from an uncaring world behind his fringe of hair. He glanced behind him at the office door, still closed, and then looked at Patterson.

  “Where’d you come from?” he asked, his tone rigid with awe.

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways, Casey,” Patterson said. “Now, you have something to tell me?”

  Casey’s blue eyes flickered anxiously. “They’re not comin’ here, Pastor? That right? The police ain’t comin’ here for me?”

  “No, Casey, they’re not coming here. Let’s sit down, shall we?” Patterson suggested.

  The pastor lead Casey to the magnificent mahogany desk that dominated his spacious office, a large bronze eagle mounted on one edge and a small American flag on the other. The sunlight flooding the office from beyond the rolling hills and valleys of Virginia flared off the giant chrome crucifix, sending reflections flickering around the room.

  Patterson poured Casey a cup of water from a cooler near the window before sitting down opposite him and watching as he sipped.

  “So, did something happen today at the hospital?”

  Casey’s features were cast in simple slabs, the round blue eyes gazing at Patterson from behind the floppy blond hair.

  “The police were at the hospital askin’ questions, though I din’ hear all of it.”

  Casey Jeff’s voice was monotone, as though somebody had removed the soul from his chest and replaced it with a recording. Complex potions conspired to quell the wayward neurons of Casey and his fellow patients, stifling their psychosis in a frozen fog of sedatives and binding their self-destructive urges in chemical chains. In the case of Patterson’s loyal protégé, they served well enough to keep him occupied as a useful source of information within the institute, at least until anything unexpected spooked him into fleeing.

  “The police weren’t there to speak to you, Casey,” Patterson reassured him. “Just you tell me what you did hear.”

  “I couldn’t get close,” Casey mumbled, “but they was talkin’ about experiments of some kind, that Daniel Neville may have been hurt. What does that mean, Pastor?”

  “It means that Daniel has suffered,” Patterson said, “and that we should pray for him.”

  Casey nodded robotically. “We could help him.”

  “Do you think that we should, Casey?”

  Casey’s rudimentary features twitched into a smile for the first time since entering the office. Entrusted with a decision, Casey felt secure again. Patterson smiled back on cue as little insects of loathing scuttled across his skin.

  The truth was that Kelvin Patterson despised Casey Jeffs. Casey was a psychotic shambles who would be unable to walk the streets were it not for the advances in medical science over the past forty years. But Patterson was also fascinated by the mentally afflicted. How did their minds work? What did they see? Hear? Taste? For Patterson, the conscience of the mentally ill represented a simple and yet unreachable unknown every bit as unfathomable as the nature of God Himself, and the similarities bothered him immensely. Narrow was the line between genius and insanity. Was it not true that the savant was also vulnerable, a genius shackled to the unstable foundations of a crumbling mind?

  He looked down at his desk to a drawer where he kept his own medications, those that he took when even the brightest of days seemed overcast, shadowed with dense and bottomless pits of despair that seemed to draw him in with powerful gravitational fields.

  “Yes, I do. How should we help him?”

  Casey’s voice made the pastor jump. He had briefly forgotten that he was there.

  Since his gradual recovery from terminal psychosis, when medical science had plucked him from oblivion, Casey Jeffs had been employed as a handyman undertaking menial tasks at the institute. The employment served as a valuable psychological anchor amid a strange and often hostile world. In these modern days of empowerment to the weak and support of the needy, Casey’s apparent success in leading a near-normal life was held by the institute as a symbol of the power of rehabilitation. The meek shall inherit the Earth, Patterson reflected as he looked into Casey’s innocent features. But the meek needed those who could lead the way, the shepherd to their flock. Patterson knew that he himself represented the closest thing to a father and a family that Casey had ever known.

  “We should ease his suffering, and help him to find God,” Patterson responded. “Daniel has suffered enough, hasn’t he?”

  Casey nodded seriously. “We all have, Pastor.”

  Patterson wondered where Casey might have picked up the reply, doubtful that it could have tumbled unbidden from the confused miasma of his own mind. Daniel Neville had been allowed to live in order to study why he alone had survived the experiments, but now he was a liability that Patterson could not afford.

  “Did the police officers actually see Daniel Neville?” he asked.

  “One of them did.” Casey nodded. “They let him into the room for a moment.”

  Patterson nodded slowly, and made his decision.

  “You remember what we spoke of, Casey? That we would do it just like we did before?”

  The blue eyes twinkled. “Yes, boss, I know what to do.” A flicker of doubt appeared. “Will it be like last time? The police made me think about the last time, about how—”

  Patterson overcame his revulsion as he reached out and patted the back of Casey’s hand.

  “It won’t be like last time, Casey, and even if it is, I will protect you when you need me.”

  The childlike relief in Casey’s eyes contrasted with the lumbering movements of his body as he stood from his chair and loped out of the office. Patterson leaned back in his chair and looked down at his desk. There a broadsheet was emblazoned with an image of Senator Isaiah Black alongside the results of the most recent polls. Patterson bit his lip as he read.

  Black’s popularity had increased in spite of, or perhaps because of, his distancing himself from the American Evangelical Alliance. Patterson felt his eyeballs surging briefly in their sockets, and he forced himself to remain calm. The polls weren’t any more psychic than he was, and could change almost literally overnight. As for the police at the institute …

  Patterson dug out his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number, waiting for the line to connect. The digital warbling of advanced security functions assured him that Byron Stone was leaving nothing to chance in Israel.

  “Yes?” came the drawling Texan voice as the line picked up.

  “There has been a complication,” Patterson said briskly. “One of the bodies may have been identified, and detectives are snooping around. Ensure that the surgeon is close at hand. We may require him to void any investigations.”

  The pastor could almost hear Byron Stone’s irritation down the line.

  “Your amateurs should never have been employed to transport the remains. Just make goddamn sure you give us enough warning, Pastor, understood?”

  Somehow, Patterson managed to rise above the Texan’s imperious tone.

  �
�Of course.”

  JABALIYA

  GAZA STRIP

  AUGUST 26

  How on earth did the two of you come to be here?” Dr. Hassim Khan asked.

  Ethan struggled out of the chair to which he had been tied. As he stood, he saw that his hands were trembling. He flexed them a few times as Rachel appeared from the tunnel behind him.

  “Are you okay?” Ethan asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” she muttered coldly, passing by him to perch on the edge of a crate nearby.

  Ethan could hardly blame her for being pissed with him, considering the situation they were now in, but it wasn’t like he’d pushed her out of the goddamn airplane. He turned to Hassim Khan and explained how MACE had pursued them, and their escape with the camera footage into Gaza.

  Hassim asked Ethan’s captors, “You know of this MACE company?”

  “Private contractors,” the younger one said, his features twisted with disgust. “They infect our land like a parasite.”

  Hassim gestured to the Palestinian who had questioned Ethan.

  “This is Mahmoud. He and his companion, Yossaf, have been protecting me here.”

  Ethan wasn’t sure how to acknowledge the men who had moments earlier been threatening to slit his throat. He decided simply to ignore them, keeping the focus of his conversation on Hassim.

  “Protecting you from what?” Ethan asked once more.

  “From abduction, ironically.” Hassim chuckled.

  Rachel frowned as she glanced at the two burly men.

  “But insurgents are sworn to Israel’s destruction, and have the most to gain from abductions.”

  It was Mahmoud who spoke, his arms folded and his gaze brooding.

  “Most Palestinians are not terrorists. Your Western media portrays us all as brutal, killing in the name of Allah, but most of us do not support terrorism. We want our homes and our lives back, but we don’t want to kill people any more than you do.”

  Ethan turned to Hassim.

  “Who’s orchestrating these abductions then? A splinter faction?”

  Hassim shook his head.

  “Mahmoud and Yossaf have spoken to everyone they know and nobody is aware of the abductions.”

  “Unlikely,” Ethan said, turning to Mahmoud. “Who do you think is abducting Westerners?”

  “The company you call MACE.”

  “What would they want with my daughter?” Rachel snorted. “What could they gain from abducting people when they’re responsible for security?”

  “Maintaining war maintains profits,” Mahmoud replied darkly. “And business here is booming.”

  “Profits over peace?” Rachel gasped.

  “Why not?” Hassim said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Rachel said, looking at Ethan for support. “If any organization wanted to abduct people, then they would target high-profile individuals like politicians or television stars, not a group of scientists. Nobody would even notice they were gone.”

  Hassim nodded.

  “Indeed, unless you had other motives that remain out of the public eye.”

  “What do you mean?” Ethan asked.

  Hassim spoke softly.

  “MACE is a powerful supplier of arms and technology to Israel, but is owned by a large church.”

  “You’re kidding me?” Ethan said in surprise.

  “No,” Hassim replied, “and the church bought them for good reason. There are many in the United States who would like to see their interpretations of biblical prophecy fulfilled, of an undivided Jerusalem as capital of Israel heralding the supposed Second Coming of Christ.”

  Ethan sat down on a crate near Hassim and looked at his watch.

  “The peace accord is due to be signed in fifteen hours’ time,” he said. “Who else was involved in Lucy’s work?”

  “Four of us that I know of,” Hassim said. “Hans Karowitz, Lucy Morgan, myself, and another American—Joseph Coogan—a biochemist from Washington DC. He was to receive any remains that Lucy found and attempt to identify them.”

  “We need to contact them,” Ethan said. “Get the word out about what’s happening here.”

  Hassim smiled bitterly.

  “That’s what I was trying to do when my friends here were able to bring me to safety before I too was abducted. All of the other scientists involved in the project have either vanished or been silenced ever since Lucy found the remains out there in the Negev.”

  Ethan thought about Hans Karowitz and his reluctance to speak of what had happened in front of the MACE bodyguards.

  “Lucy made a brief radio call about her discovery to the museum in Jerusalem. Do you think it likely that she was tracked because of those communications?”

  “It is possible,” Hassim agreed. “But the Negev is a very large desert and Lucy was digging in a restricted area where few people travel. To have found her, somebody was most likely watching her movements all along and followed her out there.”

  “Which means either the IDF or MACE,” Ethan said, turning to look at Rachel, “and given what we’ve seen so far today I know who I’d put my money on.”

  EREZ

  ISRAEL

  Spencer Malik watched as Rafael approached from the shadows, gliding silent as a ghost before stopping a meter away from where he stood. The darkness obscured his features; the broad face, the skin darkened by the passing of endless suns in countless countries. A thin silken scarf covered the lower half of his face, shielding him effectively enough to prevent identification.

  “Information,” Rafael demanded in his husky accent.

  “I don’t take orders,” Malik hissed. “You do.”

  “A shame, then, that you so often fail to carry them out.”

  Malik flashed a brittle grin in the darkness, but said nothing.

  “I will contact you with the coordinates as soon as I have them,” Rafael said. “Try not to screw up this time.”

  Malik’s grin did not budge.

  “Just get the job done.” Malik produced a small set of folded papers. “These will get you past the security at the crossing. Israel closed it some time ago, but there …” Malik stared as Rafael walked past him without another word, ignoring the papers. “Where are you going?”

  Rafael turned back to face him.

  “Fool, you would have me approach a guarded crossing? I will make my own way into Gaza. There is always a way in and out for those who know. Be gone.”

  Malik whipped his pistol out of its holster, strode forward, and jammed the metal barrel against Rafael’s head.

  “Who are you calling a fool?”

  Rafael stared up at Malik for a long moment before speaking in a soft whisper, his shoulders slumping. “Forgive me, I did not mean to offend.”

  Malik felt his features melting into a grin of deep satisfaction, and with his free hand he tapped Rafael’s stubbled cheek a few times for good measure.

  “Run along, little man.”

  Rafael nodded obediently before turning and walking away. Malik watched him stride into the night, then basked in the surge of adrenaline that coursed through his veins. Rafael was just big talk, dominated as easily as a whipped dog. A euphoric sense of well-being enveloped him as he looked down and slipped his pistol back into its holster.

  It was only then that he saw the small tear in the fabric of his shirt, just below his rib cage. He tugged at the material, saw the clean cut, and cursed. The bloody Arab had held a blade to his ribs and he never even noticed.

  He looked up, but Rafael had vanished.

  IDF NORTHERN COMMAND (PATZAN)

  NEVE YAAKOV, JERUSALEM

  This had better be important.”

  Byron Stone stood inside the doorway to the office of Lieutenant General Benjamin Aydan, a craggy, broad-shouldered veteran of the Six-Day War.

  “It is.”

  The Israeli Defense Force was never off duty, even in the small hours of the night. In a country surrounded by populations
violently opposed to its very existence, it had long been learned by both the government and the military that letting one’s guard down was tantamount to submission and an invitation to destruction.

  Within just a few years of its independence, Israel had been subjected to a joint military invasion by all three of its neighboring enemies, Arab states infected with the divine certainty that to destroy Israel was to enact the will of Allah. Israel had fought back, repelling even this concerted assault on its statehood, and had done so alone.

  “Enter.”

  Byron Stone walked into the office and closed the door. Benjamin Aydan stood and was courteous enough to shake Stone’s hand before gesturing for him to sit in the chair opposite.

  “What may I do for you?”

  “We have a situation in the Negev,” Stone said briskly. “Several hours ago one of our encampments in the Negev was infiltrated by what we believe to be a terrorist cell. Several items were stolen from the site and smuggled into Gaza.”

  General Aydan sat in silence for a moment, regarding Stone through icy eyes that had seen untold horrors. “Value?”

  “High,” Stone replied crisply. “We’re not sure of the insurgents’ intentions but we were able to track them into Gaza just after sundown.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  Stone took a deep breath. “I’d like to conduct an air strike on the insurgents’ lair.”

  Aydan’s eyes narrowed.

  “How can you be sure that the target will not incur civilian casualties?”

  “I have a man inside Gaza as we speak. He’ll identify the insurgents and their locations and be ready to provide coordinates.”

  “You’ve a man on the ground right now? That’s beyond your remit.”

  Stone maintained a neutral expression.

  “Sensitive data was stolen that concerns both MACE and Israeli Defense Force operations in the Negev. Exposure of that data to insurgent networks could be catastrophic.”

  Stone saw the general’s fist clench on his desk as he spoke.

  “What could they have taken from a little company like MACE that might possibly cause such a disruption?”