Heartbreaker (38 page)

Lynn stared at Theresa for no more than a millisecond before grabbing a pencil and a Post-it note from the top of the desk, scribbling down the number corresponding to the name, jumping up, and screaming “Jess!”

When there was no response she ran to the door of the vault.

Jess, Mr. Thompkins, and the trooper were perhaps a tenth of the way down the long wall of bronze-fronted safe-deposit boxes. They were rifling through the contents of a metal box that was pulled drawerlike from its nest when Lynn appeared.

“She’s found one! Star Wormwood sounds right, she says.” Lynn flew down the steps to hand the Post-it note to Jess.

“Six seventy-three,” Mr. Thompkins read the number aloud, then moved down the wall with a shake of his head. “We would have been here a long time.”

The box was on the far side of the wall, in the third row up from the bottom. Everyone rushed to join them in the vault as the box was pulled out.

Lynn held her breath.

Mr. Thompkins inserted a key into the small lock in the front and opened the lid. Jess picked up the topmost item, a thick sheaf of papers that had been ripped from a spiral notebook. The pages were held together with a paper clip and folded lengthwise so that the uppermost side was blank. Spreading the papers open, Jess glanced down at them, then up. His gaze met Lynn’s, though the others all crowded around.

“We got it,” he said.

Lynn breathed again.

“That’s it? That’s Michael Stewart’s box?” she asked as Mr. Thompkins bore the box out of the vault. Jess stayed right behind him, leafing through the sheaf of papers as he walked. Lynn stayed beside Jess. The rest of the crew followed. Lynn barely heard the comments, exclamations, and explanations that flowed back and forth around her. Her attention was all on Jess—and the papers he held in his hand.

“These are the plans,” Jess said to Lynn as Mr. Thompkins sat the box down on a table. He leaned against the table’s edge and turned back to the first page, moving through them more slowly as he scanned the cramped handwriting and tiny drawings the pages were filled with.

“Oh, my God.” Lynn covered her mouth with her hand. “Thank God.”

She sat down abruptly in a chair. Jess, still reading, started to frown.

His expression made Lynn’s stomach tighten.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There’s something missing,” he said. Putting the sheaf of papers down on the table, he searched through the box. Digging through the clutter of folded papers and ignoring such detritus as a pair of diamond ear studs and a small tennis trophy, of all things, Jess came up with a computer disk in a gray paper jacket that had been placed at the very bottom of the box.

On the front of the jacket was scribbled
Wormwood
.

“Here we go,” Jess said. Glancing at Mr. Thompkins, he added, “I need to use a computer.”

“Every one of our loan officers has one,” Mr. Thompkins said proudly, leading the way back to the main part of the bank. “I hope that disk is IBM-compatible.”

Jess glanced down. “It is.”

He walked around the first desk they came to—computer-equipped, just as Mr. Thompkins had claimed—and turned the machine on. Hitting a few keys, he waited a moment, then inserted the disk into the drive.

Immediately an icon blinked onto the screen, asking for the user’s password.

With everyone leaning wide-eyed over his shoulder, Jess hesitated only a second before typing in
Wormwood
.

The screen blinked and went blank. A whirling circle appeared in the middle of the darkness. It was, Lynn realized, a revolving image of a globe. The globe disappeared, to be replaced by a pinpoint of brightness in the middle of the dark screen. The pinpoint enlarged until it filled the monitor with light. There was the sound of a phone number being dialed as the program sought Internet access. The monitor blinked once, twice.

Welcome, Michael
read the words on the screen.

Beside her, Lynn heard Theresa catch her breath. She reached over, gripping the girl’s hand. Theresa’s fingers felt icy in her grasp.

For Theresa, watching Jess pull up the information her father had left behind must be almost like encountering his ghost, Lynn thought.

There was another desk next to the one Jess was using. He crossed to it, snatched up the phone, glanced down at his hand, and punched in the number.

“Ben?” he said into the mouthpiece seconds later, bringing the receiver with him as he returned to stand in front of the computer. “We found what we were looking for. The detonators for the nuclear devices—and the other bombs too—are wired to alphanumeric pagers. Yes, you heard me, alphanumeric pagers. You know, those things the drug dealers carry so they can receive messages like ‘Where’s my heroin?’ ”

Jess paused for a minute to listen, then nodded. “Yeah, and phone numbers. Those things. I’ve got a list of twelve numbers on my screen—I’m on a computer here at the bank—that I think correspond with the pagers. From what I can tell the thing is set up so that one code can be sent over the Internet to all twelve pagers at once, and that detonates the bombs. All Reverend Bob needs is a computer and a modem and that code, and he can blow us all to hell from anywhere in the world.”

Jess paused for a moment, a faint grin flickering over his mouth before disappearing as suddenly as it came.

“I’d call him that too. Stewart also apparently put a fail-safe on the system, so that he—or someone—could override the
go
code and keep the bombs from going off. Yeah, sort of like a
stop
code. You type in this code, punch the transmit button, and the detonators are deactivated.”

Jess listened a minute. “Well, now, that’s our problem: The
go
code is here, plain as day:
love heals
. No, I am not kidding. Reverend Bob types in
love heals
, and the whole country goes kapooey. But there’s only a series of asterisks where the
stop
code should be. Yeah, asterisks: eight of them. No, I don’t think that can be the code. I’m no computer expert though, and we need one here, pronto, to see if he can do more with this than I can. How fast can you get somebody to me?”

Jess paused, his face tightening. “There’s got to be someone nearer than that. Jesus, that’s cutting it close.” He let out his breath with a whoosh. “Okay, tell him to hit it. I’ll keep working on it at this end. Yeah, I’ll let you know.”

Jess hung up the phone and ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. Lynn had never seen him employ that particular gesture before, and she knew it boded no good.

But when he glanced at his audience he seemed to have himself in hand again.

“Listen, folks, we have everything we need to disarm the bombs except the right code. There’s a
stop
code built into the system, but the word or phrase Stewart chose is not on this disk. Just asterisks. Let’s put our heads together. Theresa, can you think of anything your father might have used as a code to stop a bomb from going off? Did he have any phrases he used a lot?”

Theresa thought for a minute. “The early bird catches the worm?” she suggested. “He said that to us kids nearly every morning.”

From Jess’s expression Lynn could tell he didn’t think that was a likely code.

“Why not?” he said, shrugging. “Let’s try it.”

He typed the phrase into the computer in the appropriate space and pressed
enter
. Seconds later a message blinked back at him:
code not allowed
.

“Any other phrases?” Jess asked Theresa.

She shook her head. “I can’t think of any.”

“Let’s try family names. What was your mother’s name?”

“Sally.” Theresa’s voice broke, but she did not cry.

Jess typed in
Sally
. The computer came back with
code not allowed
.

Far more patiently than Lynn knew she would have been under such circumstances, Jess worked through the Stewart family names.

Somewhere a clock chimed eight.

Lynn’s blood ran cold.

They had only an hour left to live.

“A
LL RIGHT
, L
OUIS
, let’s give it a shot. Are there any words or phrases you can think of that Stewart might have used? Do Healers ever say anything real catchy besides
love heals
?”

“We consider the name Healers insulting,” Louis said. He was standing in front of the desk that the computer rested on, while Theresa sat in a chair that had been pulled up for her. Jess still stood behind the desk.

“Come on, Louis, think,” Jess said impatiently. “Something biblical maybe, like Wormwood.”

Wormwood. Something about that teased at the corners of Lynn’s mind. All at once she realized what was bothering her.

She stood up, crossed to where the list of safe-deposit-box renters still rested on a desk near the entrance, and turned to the last page.

Her pulse speeded up as she found what she was looking for.

The name Star Wormwood was printed not once, but twice. Of course, it could just be a computer error, but …

Running her finger across the line to the corresponding box number, she sucked in her breath: 289.

“Jess!” she cried. “Jess, I think I know where the
stop
code might be: box two eighty-nine!”

“What?” He looked up from his typing to stare at her. With the lobby between them, their gazes met.

“There are two boxes rented to Star Wormwood!” Lynn said urgently. “Number six seventy-three. And number two eighty-nine!”

“Let’s check it out.” Jess abandoned the computer to head for the vault again, Mr. Thompkins in tow. The rest of them followed.

Box 289, when pulled, contained only a single sheet of spiral-notebook paper rolled into a neat scroll and bound with a rubber band.

Lynn’s heart pounded as Jess pulled off the rubber band and smoothed out the paper.

Michael Stewart’s inelegant scrawl was unmistakable. But from where she stood she could not quite make out the words he had scribbled in black ink.

Jess read them aloud: “No man knoweth the day or the hour.” He looked up. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s got to be it.”

“What time is it?” Marty asked.

“Eight twenty-seven,” Mr. Thompkins answered. Jess was already on his way back to the computer with Lynn at his heels.

Half an hour left.

With Lynn beside him and everyone else jockeying for a good view, Jess typed in the words.

No man knoweth the day or the hour
.

The computer screen blinked once, twice. A message appeared.

Code accepted
, it said. Seconds later they all watched as twelve winged postcards were dispatched over the Internet, one right after the other.

The computer screen blinked again, then offered another message.

Pager contact completed. Bombs deactivated
.

For a moment a silence so thick it was tangible hung over the room. All of them, from Jess to the state troopers, stared at the screen.

Then, “Yes!” Jess said, pumping his fist skyward and sweeping Lynn up in a one-armed bear hug. Cheers erupted all around them. Marty jumped up and down like an excited chihuahua, while the troopers whooped and exchanged high-fives.

“It’s over, isn’t it? Just like that!” Lynn clung to Jess, her arms wrapped around his neck, laughing and crying at the same time.

“It’s over,” he confirmed, kissing her mouth and then setting her back on her feet. “Give me a minute, I’ve got to tell Ben.”

Stepping to the adjacent desk, he glanced at his wrist and made the call.

“Found the code,” he said laconically into the receiver. “A verse from the Bible: No man knoweth the day or the hour. Crisis over. All that’s left for you guys to do is clean up.”

Listening, his eyes narrowed. “No, I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks for sharing.”

He was silent for a moment. “He could be anywhere in the world. What are the chances we’re going to find him in a half hour?” Pause. “Okay, I know, I know. I’ll do my best. Yeah, I’ll call you back.”

Jess put the receiver down and looked glumly at Lynn. Around the computer the celebration continued unabated. No one else had paid any attention to the conversation.

“What now?” Lynn asked quietly.

“Ben just mentioned the interesting possibility that the Healers might have been smart enough to get the bombs rewired after Stewart ran out on them. Now, I don’t think they did, because if so they would have had no reason to come after the guy like they did, but they might have. It is still theoretically possible that we might have bombs going off at nine
A.M
.”

“Oh, no!” Lynn groaned. Then she started to get angry. After all they had been through this was too much! “So what are they doing about it? Somebody is working on this besides you and Ben, aren’t they? Like the FBI, and the CIA, and the Pentagon …”

A half-smile crooked Jess’s mouth. “Honey, they’re all working on it. Ninety percent of the security forces of this country are on it, most of whom are en route from South Dakota at this moment. It just so happens that we’re at ground zero. Ben wants me to see if Louis or Theresa knows anything that might help us locate Reverend Bob.”

“Just in case,” Lynn said.

“Just in case,” Jess agreed, glancing around. “Theresa, would you come here a minute, please?”

Like Lynn, he seemed loath to share the bad news with the others just yet. The atmosphere in the room was so buoyant with relief that Lynn, for one, dreaded having to watch it dissipate.

Theresa joined them beside the desk, looking up at Jess inquiringly.

“Do you have any idea where Robert Talmadge might go to await the end of the world? Did your father ever mention some kind of hideaway?”

Theresa shook her head. “I would expect him to be in the compound with everybody else.”

“He wasn’t there. Federal agents raided the compound.”

“Maybe he just hadn’t made it back to South Dakota from Utah yet when the agents came.”

Jess frowned. “What do you mean, maybe he hadn’t made it back from Utah? When was he in Utah?”