The Arx (39 page)

He thought back to Carson’s words and to Dogan’s attack on Miles. He had an idea. His injured hand was still wrapped in the blood-soaked cloth. Fighting the intense pain, he twisted his damaged fingers to work it loose.

“You’re not in a position to bargain,” Carla said. She pressed the knife into Rebecca’s neck. A drop of blood trickled from the spot where the razor-sharp blade broke the skin.

Frank continued to loosen the cloth, struggling to keep the searing pain shooting through his hand from registering on his face.

“Give yourselves up,” he said to Carla as he worked his fingers. “The deformity isn’t your fault. You didn’t ask to be this way. We may be able to treat it. Maybe your people can be integrated into society.”

He’d loosened the bloody cloth so that it would easily fall from his hand if he let go.

“What?” Carla sneered. “Cure us of our superiority?”

“Superiority?” Frank said. “You’re cold-blooded killers.” Slowly and painfully, he worked his injured arm into position.

“We do what’s necessary to ensure the continuation of our kind,” Carla said. “Death is our way. With death comes change and progress.”

Frank edged his good hand toward the gun under his coat.

For the first time, he saw something vulnerable, even innocent, in Carla’s expression. For a fraction of a second, he felt pity for her. She was like a primeval mother defending her young – in fact, in this case, defending all of the Arx. At some level, she really cared about them; maybe not as individuals, but as a ‘Species’.

“Now tell me!” Carla shouted. Once again she raised the knife above Rebecca’s neck.

It was time to act. Battling the blinding pain, Frank flung his injured arm toward Carla and opened his hand. The blood-soaked cloth flew through the air and landed on Carla’s shoulder.

The Matriarch for all the Arx gasped as the blood from the rag splattered over her face and clothing. She dropped the knife, let go of Rebecca and frantically began wiping the filth from her body.

Frank had almost fainted from the pain. He fought to clear his head. With his good hand, he reached for the gun in his belt.

The leering face of Eugene Mastico swept into his mind as he gripped the cold steel – the stinking alley, the disgusting object lying at his feet, his bloody fingers wrapped around his gun. This was the first time since…

He focused on the pain, reveling in it, willing it to expand through his body and obliterate all other sensations. His arm shook as he lifted the gun and fired. The bullet caught Carla in the left shoulder. She grunted and collapsed to the floor.

Frank rushed forward and grabbed Rebecca. He had to support her; she could barely stand.

He glanced down at Carla. She’d pulled the device from her pocket and now pressed a button. The device beeped. Its numeric display now read three hundred. The value began counting down in seconds.

She pressed another button and a door opened to an elevator behind her.

Frank kicked the knife out of her reach, stuffed the gun in his belt, and wrestled the device from Carla’s hands. To his surprise, she didn’t resist. Instead she smiled at him. He handed the device to Rebecca and once again grabbed his gun. His hand shook as he trained it again on Carla. His finger moved on the trigger but stopped. He couldn’t kill her in cold blood. The count was ticking down. There was no more time.

He turned and rushed with Rebecca back to the door they’d entered, frantically searched for the correct button, and the door slid open. The team was still standing with their guns drawn.

Frank glanced at the display. The count said two hundred eighty. He glanced at his own watch and noted the number of seconds to their destruction.

“The place is gonna blow!” he yelled, supporting Rebecca as he rushed toward the door. “We got two hundred and eighty seconds to get out of here.”

The group tore down the hallway to the elevator. Frank pressed the button on the fob. Nothing happened. He understood Carla’s smile. Neither the fob nor the electronic device would open it.

He drew a mental picture of their position in the mansion and realized they were directly under the point where the evacuees had been herded into the tunnel. In the center of the room stood a pillar about two meters in diameter. Frank estimated that it would line up exactly with the tunnel door.

“There’d have to be away to reach the tunnels from down here,” he said. He frantically studied the pillar, and found a barely visible doorway on one side. He tried the fob. Nothing.

“Two hundred seconds,” one of the ERT cops said.

“Blast it,” Frank said to him.

“Get back,” said the ERT leader.

The group rushed behind a nearby wall and Frank poked his head around. The leader called up one of the team, who hauled a strip
of plastic explosive from his pack, placed it along the outline of the door, and attached a detonator.
He joined Frank and the others.

The man activated the detonator. There was a massive explosion, and a shower of metal and plaster flew around them. A huge hole was blown in the column. The leader rushed over, reached out a gloved hand, and threw open what was left of the door.

They ran for the opening and followed a narrow staircase leading upwards, emerging from the still-open hatch into the room where Frank had fought with Dogan. The man they’d left guarding the Arx leader lay on the floor. His staring eyes left no doubt about his condition. Dogan's body was gone.

“One hundred twenty seconds,” an ERT cop said.

Frank nodded to their left. They ran for their lives.

Thank God!
Frank thought, as the vast foyer came into view.

The leader radioed the snipers to hold their fire. Frank and the others rushed through the main doors and out onto the driveway. The winding lane was crowded with police cruisers. They dashed across it and had just reached the heavily treed section of the grounds when they heard the first explosion.

Frank glanced back at the building as he ran. Inexplicably, he saw Carla De Leon standing in the topmost window. She was smiling. Seconds later the entire top floor exploded.

Frank led Rebecca behind the nearest tree. They were more than a hundred meters from the mansion, but were still showered with debris. They were knocked to the ground by the shock wave. He got back up and helped Rebecca to her feet. They ran behind a small hill and hunkered down.

Frank crawled to the brow of the hill and peeked over. A massive explosion blew the mansion into a million pieces. Debris and ash flew into the smoke-filled sky and showered on the ground around them as the building collapsed into a heap of smoldering wood and stone.

Lohengrin

A light drizzle was falling, and Frank stared at a droplet crawling down the blackened wall of what was left of Richard Carson’s shack on Parker Island, as a worker drove in a shovel blade and removed the first clump of dirt from Jimmy’s grave.

Frank’s face, like numerous unseen portions of his body, bore a lattice of cuts and bruises. He wore a plastic brace on his neck, and his lower right arm was in a cast.

Several uniforms stood by, along with Sergeant Reid, Terry Hastings, and a representative from the Coroner’s office. Rebecca had declined their invitation to be there; she was still dealing with the knowledge that Ralphie was lost to her forever.

Frank had resisted coming himself. The horrific experiences of recent weeks were finally fading into a dreamlike past. This was the last place in the world he wanted refreshed in his memory.

In the end, he’d decided that he had to see with his own eyes what Carson had sacrificed much of his life, and finally become a murderer, to preserve.

Two other workers joined in, and the scar in the earth grew more quickly. After about ten minutes, one of the shovels clinked against something hard.

“Wait,” Reid shouted.

The workers stepped away and Reid, Frank, and Terry edged up to the grave site. Reid looked at Frank, who shook his head and extended his good hand toward the ground.

Terry climbed into the hole, crouched down, and dug around the object the worker had struck. He uncovered the top of a large glass jar with a sealed lid. Within minutes the entire container was exposed. The workers lifted it to a temporary workbench nearby, scraped off the excess black earth still covering much of it, and finally used a spray bottle to wash it clean.

“Just like Dr. Carson told you,” Reid said, bending down and examining the contents.

Inside, floating in a yellowish liquid, was the perfectly preserved brain of Jimmy.

They exhumed the rest of Jimmy’s body, and Carson’s as well, and got them ready to be transported back to the Coroner’s office. Frank exhaled. A massive weight had finally been lifted from his shoulders.

“You okay, Frank?” Reid asked.

Frank nodded and smiled.

“Congratulations,” Reid said. “To say we owe you one’s kind of an understatement.”

Reid glanced over at the body bags being loaded into the van. He turned back to Frank.

“You know, we can provide you with new identities, even have plastic surgery done…”

“From what Ricky Augustus said that won’t be necessary. The threat of the Savants themselves, on the other hand…”

“What can they do now?” Reid said. “Their cover’s been blown. Olmerol’s been banned internationally. The two top leaders are dead.”

“You sure about that?”

Reid stared at him. “Terry said they saw that Dogan character dead, and you said yourself that you saw Carla De Leon at the window just before the explosion.”

Frank shrugged.

“You know something I don’t?”

Frank shook his head. “Just a hunch.”

“Your hunches scare me.”

Frank smiled and slapped Reid on the back. “Let’s hope I’m wrong.”

“So this is what a Columbarium looks like,” Rebecca said as they strolled into the ornate building deep within the cemetery proper.

Stacked rows of cells filled each wall. Inside, behind the glass doors, were bouquets of flowers, and occasionally a photograph or war medal.

“It’s nice of you to bring me here – I think,” she said tentatively, scanning the hundreds of boxes, “but did you want me to see it for a particular reason? It’s kind of creepy, but definitely an original place to take a date. And why are you packing?” She nodded at the bulge under his jacket.

“Reid still has the extra copies of Carson’s material I gave him,” Frank answered, “and they’ve made more, but the Savants may still be watching me. I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“But why should they care about your parents’ ashes?”

Frank smiled as they stopped at a point near the back of the room. A box just below eye-level had a plate under it that said: “Edward and Grace Langer.”

Frank took a small key out of his pocket, and glanced around the room. They were alone.

“I wasn’t sure if the stuff would fit…”

He unlocked the door of the compartment, removed a small vase of flowers, then the urn containing his parents’ ashes. Inside the compartment, wedged against the back, was a manila envelope and Carson’s notebook computer. He pulled them out, and replaced the ashes and the flowers.

“You put the originals here?” said Rebecca.

“I didn’t know where else to hide them. I was worried the Savants might find this too, but I was pretty careful about being followed.”

Frank and Rebecca sat holding hands in the reserve seating at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. From the darkness in a far corner of the stage, a figure approached, standing solemnly in a boat towed by a pair of swans.

“I hate to tell you,” Frank leaned over and whispered, “but the swan thing is kind of lame.”

“Shhh,” someone whispered behind them.

Rebecca rolled her eyes and whispered back. “Just relax and get into the story, Frank. I think you’ll like it.”

The boat arrived and Lohengrin, resplendent in his shining armour and winged helmet, stepped up to a stone terrace, strode confidently over to the princess, took her hand, and began to sing.

Frank leaned over again and whispered: “He doesn’t look anything like me.”

Rebecca shook as she tried to keep from laughing. She finally composed herself and jabbed him with her elbow.

“You’re not supposed to talk, Frank,” she whispered. “You’re disturbing the people around us.” But she was still fighting to stifle her own laughter.

Two hours later the opera ended to a standing ovation. The performers left the stage, then returned to take their bows.

Frank finally spoke. “That was beautiful,” he said, smiling, over the noise of the applause.

“So you liked it?” Rebecca asked in the lobby after the show. Finely dressed patrons crowded around them, discussing the performance.

He nodded.

“Really?”

“Really.”

They pushed through the crowd to the bar.

“The constant singing’s a bit hard to take at first,” he said as they arrived, “but once you get used to it, yeah, it was great.”