Season Of The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 1) (63 page)

“If you’re looking for sympathy,”
Naomi told him, “you’ve come to the wrong place.”

Curtis shook his head. “I’m not
looking for anything of the sort,” he told her. “I know there’s a
special place in Hell reserved for me for what I’ve done, and
that’s that. I can’t wave a magic wand and make it all better. I
simply want you to understand that Kempf offered hope for my
daughter, and then later offered what I thought was hope for
humanity. Had I known...”

Jack could see that Naomi would
never accept his words, but he could understand where Curtis was
coming from. He wasn’t an evil man. He had been a desperate father,
and then a world leader who’d seen an opportunity to do some good.
A dupe, and a fool who hadn’t asked more pointed questions,
perhaps, but Jack couldn’t fault him for being human. And it was as
close as Curtis was going to come to an apology.

“So,” Jack asked, “what’s to become
of us?”

“We can arrange for the rest of your
people to drop back into society pretty much as they were,” Curtis
told him. “They’ll all need to have a cover story of where they
were since they went underground, but that can be sorted out.
Special Agent Richards is a bit more difficult, but he’ll have a
cover story that he was undercover, investigating EDS, and helped
bring in the team that took them down. Director Ridley approved
it.”

Jack and Naomi both frowned at her
name.

“She’s another one who ‘didn’t
know,’” Naomi said.

Curtis glared at her. “It may
interest you to know that the harvesters, as you call them, cured
her of Lou Gehrig’s disease when she was in her twenties,” he said
slowly. “That’s how they recruited her. But she found out that it
wasn’t a gift when she refused to back my decision to drop the nuke
on you, and one of the harvesters…reversed the disease.” He paused.
“Director Ridley is currently in Johns Hopkins Hospital in
Baltimore, dying. If you want to think ill of me, go ahead. But
Ridley’s courage in standing up to the harvester played a large
role in your being alive today, and she’s paid a terrible price for
it.”

Naomi’s face flushed, and she looked
away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I...”

“Don’t apologize,” Curtis said more
gently. “I feel like such a fool for the government hounding you,
thinking you were the bad guys when in fact it was I and the others
who were manipulated like marionettes.

“But that brings me back to you
two.” He looked at Jack. “There’s no way we can undo the whole
most-wanted thing, Jack. It would completely discredit the FBI,
which as you know has suffered terribly in this whole mess, and
your name would never be truly cleared.”

Jack nodded. He could shout his
innocence from the rooftops, but no one would ever truly believe
him.

“And you, Naomi, are in much the
same boat,” Curtis went on. “After being painted as the leader of a
notorious band of terrorists, we could try to clear your name, but
I don’t think it would ever wash with the public.”

“So what’s the alternative?” Naomi
demanded.

“To put it simply,” Curtis told her,
“I’m offering you the chance to start over, although you’re
probably not going to like the cover story.” After a pause, he
continued, “You two died in the assault on the EDS base. You had a
nuke. It went off. You and lots of other people died and the good
guys – a lot of them dead – won in the end.”

“So we’re the bad guys?” Naomi asked
angrily.

“Naomi,” he told her, “I’d be happy
to say EDS was right. I’d even throw myself to the lions to make
things better. But how do we explain all of this to the public? To
the world? We…I killed over a thousand American citizens with a
nuclear bomb,” he said bitterly. “I can only thank God that so few
people lived in that area, or the butcher’s bill would have been
far, far worse.” His face blanched at the thought of what the same
bomb would have done to a major city, certain that he would have
still given the order to drop it.

“Then there’s the destruction of the
genebank facilities around the world,” Curtis went on, “and the
deaths that went along with them, including more of our own people
in Colorado. EDS was framed for all those things. I know that now.
But the truth isn’t something the world, or our own people, are
going to easily accept.”

He looked out the window for a
moment, the crushing weight of responsibility clearly written in
the lines on his face. “Then there’s the little issue of
a…non-human sentient species that wants to use us as food, or as
hosts, and which had extensive influence over a number of
governments in the world.” He had read the preliminary report from
Naomi of what the New Horizons seed was really for, and what it
did, and it still gave him shivers. “I don’t think you realize just
how close to the brink the world is right now in the wake of those
attacks and the nuke. Plus the viral outbreak that, as you
suggested, is probably the work of New Horizons to drive up demand
for the seed. People are already terrified, and the truth of what’s
happened would only fan the flames of that fear. The government
would collapse, and God only knows what would happen overseas. The
Russians and NATO are on alert, and the Indians and the Chinese are
at one another’s throats.” He looked at Jack, then Naomi. “Blaming
the whole thing on EDS isn’t fair, but people will believe it. I
can get the other countries to stop rattling their sabers and work
on calming the people here at home. It will buy us time to get
everyone back onto saner ground.”

“What if I wanted to walk out that
door,” Naomi said, “and hold a press conference? What if I told the
world everything?”

Curtis shrugged. “I wouldn’t stop
you. I’ll even go one better: I swear on my daughter’s life, that
if you want me to go before the public right now and tell them
everything, I will. Right now. But you have to live with the
consequences.”

“He’s right,” Jack said quietly.
Naomi turned to stare at him, a disbelieving look on her face.
“Naomi, we have to think of what’s more important. Neither of us is
ever going to regain our credibility: you’ll be known at best as a
UFO crackpot, and at worst as a terrorist, and I’ll always be known
as a traitor to the FBI. We’ll never get our old lives back. And if
the President gets up and tells the world that all of this was set
up by a race of things that want to wipe us off the planet, and
that you could be turned into one of them just by eating corn on
the cob…” He shook his head. “There’d be a panic.”

After a moment, Naomi looked away.
“You’re right,” she admitted finally. “I don’t like it, but you’re
right.”

Curtis nodded, relieved.

“So what do we do now?” Jack asked
the President.

“You enter the Witness Protection
Program,” Curtis told him. “You start life with new identities, a
new home, the whole works. With one extra twist. Think of it as a
personal favor from someone who doesn’t deserve to ask.”

“What’s that?” Naomi
said.

Curtis leaned forward. “Once your
backgrounds have been reconstructed, I want you two to lead a new
agency,” he explained. “Call it whatever you like, but I want you
to track down any more of these damn creatures and kill them,
investigate where they came from, and learn how we can better
protect ourselves. We’ve spent millions of dollars and untold
talent looking for other sentient life. You found them. You’ve seen
the beast, you know the reality, and I want people like you in
charge of helping to keep our planet safe. I’ve already drafted an
executive order and I have it on good authority that Congress will
roll the necessary funding into the intelligence budget under the
cover of a classified think-tank. It’s a done deal. All you have to
do is say ‘yes.’”

Jack and Naomi looked at one
another. After a moment, they nodded.

“Count us in,” Jack told
him.

***

Carl Richards strode down the
hallway at Johns Hopkins Hospital, ignoring those he passed. This
time it wasn’t because he was being rude, but because he was
singularly focused on his duty. He had always done his duty for the
Bureau. It had been the cornerstone of his life.

But this was the first time that
performing that duty had torn his guts out. Outwardly he was his
normal calm, arrogant self. Inside, he felt like crying like a
baby. It was an unfamiliar sensation, one that he hadn’t felt since
his wholly unpleasant childhood. Any other time he would have
banished the feeling with a surge of anger at himself for being
weak.

But not today. Not today.

He finally arrived at a particular
door. It was guarded by four Bureau special agents, all men he had
hand-picked. As acting Deputy Director, he had the authority to do
that now. He also had the tremendous, crushing responsibility that
went with it. Director Ridley’s decision to promote him above many
other more senior agents had come as a shock to many, including
Richards. But with the battering the Bureau had taken since Sheldon
Crane’s death, Richards was the logical choice. He was senior
enough, and had received something he had never sought and never
wanted in the aftermath of the EDS affair: the title of hero. He
had received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s
highest award for civilians, and been paraded around like the first
astronauts who returned from the moon. His had become a household
name virtually overnight as the man who’d led the charge against
home-grown terrorists who’d set off a nuke in central California.
The story that the spin doctors had come up with had expertly woven
fact with lies, and a Hollywood producer had already contacted him
about movie rights. The public had swallowed it all, hook, line,
and sinker. Richards had parroted every word the spin doctors had
fed to him, had gotten everything right. And he had hated every
minute of it.

This visit brought him back to the
true reality, and he welcomed it, despite the uncomfortable
emotions it had raised.

Duty. That was something he
understood.

He opened the door to the room of
one of the true heroes, and his heart ached as he stepped
inside.

“Madam Director,” he said softly. “I
brought a little something for you.”

Monica Ridley lay in the hospital
bed, her once strong and proud body reduced to wasted flesh
stretched over bone. The artificially accelerated attack of Lou
Gehrig’s disease had done in the course of days what it normally
would have taken years to do. She was totally paralyzed now, except
for her eyes: she could still move and focus them, and blink to
communicate yes-or-no responses, but that was all.

Her systems were rapidly shutting
down as the disease destroyed her body, and she had steadfastly
refused any sort of artificial support beyond an IV to keep her
hydrated.

Richards had gotten the call from
her primary physician this morning: “I don’t have a crystal ball,”
he had said sadly, “but I think today is probably the day.” The day
Monica Ridley would pass from this life.

Richards had cleared his schedule,
putting off his regular duties for a far higher one. He had
retrieved something from Ridley’s office – she remained the
director, and no one had touched anything – before making the drive
up to Baltimore. He hadn’t taken a car with a driver, as he easily
could have. Instead, he drove his black Impala, alone with his
thoughts.

Looking at her now, he knew that she
wouldn’t acknowledge his presence with a smile or a wave, a word of
greeting. She couldn’t, and the knowledge was like a white-hot
knife driven into his gut.

He walked to the side of the bed and
pulled over a chair, seating himself so she could see him. Someone
else might have thought she looked pitiful, but Richards spared
pity for no one. And certainly not for a woman who’d had the
courage to face this particular fate.

He began to speak and found he
couldn’t. He had to pause a moment to regain his voice. Pity wasn’t
in his vocabulary, but pride was. And at this moment, he was
overcome with it.

“I brought something for you,” he
finally managed to repeat after clearing his throat. He held up
what he’d retrieved from her office: a battered book that was a
fixture on her desk, a collection of poems by Robert Frost that he
knew was one of her most treasured possessions and that she read
from every day. “I take it you kind of like this Frost
guy?”

She blinked
slowly, twice.
Yes
. The heart rate monitor beeped in the background, seemingly
in time with her reply.

“Well, I’m not exactly into poetry,”
Richards said, forcing a smile. “It would be bad for my
image.”

Yes
.

Richards tried to imagine the words
that might have gone with that tiny reply. He suspected she would
have had a few choice phrases for him. That warmed his
smile.

“Okay,” he went on, “you’ll just
have to bear with me then as I stumble through this. They don’t
normally put poetry in the sports section of the paper.”

Yes
.

He imagined her laughing at
that.

“Well, let’s do this,” he told her,
turning to a page that had the biggest and most-worn dog ear. “The
Road Not Taken,” Richards said, more softly now, trying to keep his
voice steady. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I
could not travel both...”