The Heaven Trilogy (125 page)

And then suddenly Shannon did turn those green eyes skyward. He smiled at her!

Her heart stopped; her breathing ceased. Whatever body she possessed quaked in the sky. A thousand voices collided in her mind. The nerve endings in her fingers and toes rattled madly.

Then the forest rolled up beneath her, like a canvas prepared for the tube.

Sherry bolted up in the armchair, her eyes wide open, her breath now coming in quick short gasps. She jerked her head about the room.

Her mind began to connect scattered dots into an image. She was in her apartment again; drool edged down her cheek; Marisa stood over the sink in the kitchen; daylight streamed through the windows; the clock on the wall now read seven o'clock. Those were the dots, and together they said she'd just slept through the night!

And she'd had another vision. Like the one that she'd had in the box eight years ago.

Sherry stood to her feet, still trembling. The blue blanket fell to the floor. What could be the meaning of such a vision, anyway?

“Marisa?”

“Good morning,” her roommate called politely from the kitchen.

Sherry staggered over to the kitchen, running her hand over her head as if that might clear her thoughts.

Marisa turned and studied her with a raised brow. “You okay?”

Sherry ran her eyes about the room, still collecting herself. “I slept through the night,” she said as much to herself as to her roommate. “Without a nightmare.”

Her roommate stilled her hands in the sink.

Sherry continued, as though still in her dream. “And I had a vision, I think.”

Now Marisa turned to face her, quickly drying her hands on a towel. “A vision? You mean you dreamt something.”

“Maybe, but it was different from the ones on the beach. It was like the dream I had in the box when my parents were killed. I was floating above all this stuff and seeing things that were real, in real time. Like the clock, it read eleven, and I was sleeping on the chair. Did you cover me with a blanket?”

“I came out to get a drink at about eleven and saw you asleep. I didn't want to wake you, so I just pulled it over you.”

“Yeah, well I saw the afghan on me.”

The dream came back to Sherry in full color now. She remembered the boy and she felt her heart lift. Shannon! Only that couldn't have been real time, because he looked unchanged from the last day she'd seen him.

“I saw Shannon,” she said and her voice trembled slightly.

“You always see Shannon,” her roommate said.

“No. I've
thought
about him a lot, but this is the first time I've seen him.” Sherry sat on a stool, her mind abuzz. “And I slept through the night—without a nightmare. That says something.”

“Well, I can't argue with that. Maybe standing up to Piper yesterday did some good after all.”

“That's not it. Although I think I just might agree to their three-month medical leave—somehow I can't see working with them now.”

Marisa dipped her hands back into the dishwater. “So you're saying this was an actual vision. Like the kind your grandmother supposedly has.”

“I don't know. But this wasn't just a dream.”

Her roommate raised a brow and wiped a green plate. “You actually saw Shannon this time. Really saw him, huh?”

“He was younger than he would be now. But it felt so real.”

“You never saw his body . . .”

“That's what I'm saying. I actually saw him—”

“No. I mean after he was killed. You never saw Shannon physically dead.”

“Please, we've been over this a dozen times. He's dead. Period. I'm not going to open up old wounds.” She'd said the same many times, but the argument didn't feel as strong in light of her dream. He had been alive there, hadn't he?

“You say that, but I'm telling you, you don't have closure. How do you know he was actually killed back there, if you didn't see his body?”

“Don't be stupid.” Sherry turned to the window, remembering. It had been some government man who'd told her the plantation had been overrun, the Richtersons killed. Drug infighting. “Everyone knows that he was killed.”

“Then verify it again. Track it down again. Official knowledge of his death. People have been tormented for years by lingering doubts, and from what I can see, you fall into that group. You're still having dreams about him, for crying out loud!”

“I
do
have official knowledge,” Sherry said.

She clenched her eyes and tried to think reasonably. The very idea that he might still be alive cut at her like a knife. A thousand hours of therapy had placed him in a small corner of her mind—always there, always vivid, but small. Now he was suddenly coming back to the surface, and she could not allow a dead past to retake her mind. It would be worse than her nightmares.

A lump the size of a boulder pressed painfully in her throat and she cleared it. “I don't want to go there again.”

But suddenly she knew that she did have to go there again. If for no other reason than the fact that she'd had this crazy dream. She had to at least verify his death again. Now that the issue had risen from the grave, she would either have to live with its haunting or bury it once again. The realization blared loud like a horn.

Sherry swallowed and steeled herself against further sentimentality. God knew she had been through worse than this. Much worse.

“How would I verify it?”

“Call the government. Living relatives.”

“Most of his family came from Denmark.”

“Then living relatives in Denmark. Your mother was American, right? We can find an agency who tracks foreign deaths. Can't hurt.”

Sherry nodded. They would only confirm his death.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE TWENTY-FOUR hours Director Friberg had given Casius to turn over his findings had come and gone. Casius had only gone. That was the problem. But then it really wasn't such an unusual problem—not with Casius.

David Lunow sat across from Mark Ingersol, gazing through the tinted window at the CIA complex, suddenly wishing he'd brought the car after all instead of riding his bicycle. An ominous black sky dumped rain over the hills of Virginia, masking the skyline. Ingersol sat stoically with greased hair and furrowed brow. The door suddenly opened and Friberg walked in. He didn't bother to apologize for keeping them waiting. He simply strode to the head of the table, sat carefully, and pulled his sleeves down, one at a time.

“So, we have a problem, I take it,” he said and then looked up at David.

“It appears so.”

Friberg glanced at the assassin's red portfolio that lay square in front of Ingersol.

“Suggestions?”

Ingersol spoke, “Maybe he's outlived his usefulness.”

“Sir, if I may,” David said, “Casius is the most active operative we have.”

“
Active
is not synonymous with
useful,
David. An operative is only useful if he can follow simple directions. It appears your man has a problem with that. He's beyond control. Perhaps it's time we put him aside.”

A chill spiked at the base of David's skull.
Put him aside?
They all knew you didn't just “put aside” assassins. You didn't just give killers lunch money and drop them off at the next bus stop. You eliminated killers. Otherwise they might very well end up in your own backyard, killing someone you didn't want killed.

David cleared his throat. “He's on the edge, but I wouldn't characterize him as out of control.”

Ingersol and Friberg both stared at him without responding.

“I really don't see a reason to terminate him.”

“I think the man has outlived his invitation at the agency,” Friberg said.

David blinked. “If you'll pardon me, sir, I don't see it that way. A man who does what Casius does
needs
a kind of reckless confidence. We've lived with it for seven years.”

Ingersol cast a questioning glance at Friberg and it occurred to David that in all likelihood neither of these men knew the facts about Casius. He reached for the red folder and opened it.

“We know who we're dealing with,” Friberg said.

“And I know him better,” David continued before they could stop him. “I knew of Casius's father—went by the name Micha. A sniper for hire who was best known for picking off half a dozen cartel bosses. When his father was killed in that nightclub, Casius was eighteen. He had his father's touch, to say the least. He came to us one year later. He had no living relatives, no property— nothing. Wanted a job. We put him through our training regimen, but believe me, Casius didn't need our training. We might have taught him a trick or two, but he was born to kill.”

“He's unstable,” Friberg said. It sounded more like a command. Like saying,
The trash is full
, when you really mean,
Take the trash out
.

“Actually, he's very much in control of his decisions.”

“The man doesn't even distinguish between us and the people we pay him to kill. You heard him. In his mind we're all monsters.”

“He's a killer. You accuse another killer of being a monster and you're accusing him of being a monster. That's understandable.” David paused. “Look, very few agents have the ability to operate at his level. And with that come a few unavoidable consequences, I agree. But you don't just replace a man like this every day. We could go ten years without finding his equal.”

“I don't care if it takes twenty years to find his equal—we can't afford a rogue agent digging around where he has no business digging.” Friberg glared at him. “If Casius becomes a liability, we have no choice but to unplug him. I'm surprised that concerns you.”

“If he becomes a liability, maybe. But I don't think we've reached that point. What if he does take Jamal out? Do we have a problem with that?”

“That's not the point. His motivation is personal and he's out of control.”

“I disagree,” David said.

The director turned to Ingersol. As the head of Special Operations the decision would ultimately be Ingersol's. “And you?” Friberg asked.

Ingersol pulled the red folder toward him. An eight-by-ten photo of Casius, with short black hair and bright blue eyes, was paper-clipped to the left flap. Ingersol studied the photo.

“You think you can draw him in?” he asked David.

“I can always draw him in. I'm his handler.”

“Then bring him in again.”

“And if he won't come in?” Friberg asked.

No one answered.

Friberg stood. “You've got another twenty-four hours,” he said and walked from the room.

THE ROOM was beneath the earth, shrouded in blackness. Only one man knew its location and in reality no one knew that man. His name was Jamal. They hated him or loved him, but they did not know him.

Well, yes, there were those who knew his face and his voice and his money. But they didn't know
him.
They didn't know his loves and his desires and all the reasons why he did what he did. If they knew his passion, it was only the passion to strike out. To exact his revenge.

But then Jamal could not imagine life any other way.

A small ticking sound echoed softly through the darkness. He'd sunk the ten-by-twenty room into the earth and the water sometimes found its way through the rocks. In a way the sound was comforting. A sort of gentle reminder that the clock was winding down. The time was so close now. So very close.

The smell of musty dirt crowded his nostrils. A twenty-watt bulb glowed under a copper shade on his desk, casting a rust-colored light over the ancient wood. To his right a large cockroach skittered across the wall and stopped. Jamal stared at it for a full ten seconds, thinking that a cockroach had the best of all lives, living in its own darkness without thought for more.

He walked to the wall, snatched up the insect before it could move, and quickly pinched off its head. Jamal returned to the desk and set the roach on top of the hot copper shade. Its headless body twitched once and then stilled.

Jamal pulled on his headset and punched a phone number into the pad before him. The electronics along the wall to his right were the kind one would expect in a submarine perhaps, not here in this dungeon. But there was more than one way to remain hidden from the world and Jamal possessed no desire to sink beneath the waves every time he wanted to pull his strings. Of course, bringing the electronics here, of all places, had not proved a simple matter. It had taken him a full year to pull it off without raising suspicions.

The protected signal took thirty seconds to find its mark. The voice that spoke into his earpiece sounded as though it came from the bottom of a well. “Hello?”

“Hello, my friend.”

The man's breath stilled. Jamal's voice had that strange effect on men.

A shiver rippled through Jamal's bones. “It is ready?”

It took a few seconds for the man to respond. “Yes.”

“Good. Because the time has come. You will begin immediately. You can do this?”

“Yes.”

“Listen very carefully, my friend. We can't turn back now. No matter what happens we cannot turn back. If anything happens that might threaten our plans, you will accelerate them, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Jamal held the man in silence for a moment. He picked the roach from the shade and pulled its wings off. The body had been slightly baked and a smell similar to burnt hair rose to his nostrils. He bit the thorax in two and rolled the one half in his mouth, allowing saliva to gather. He put the other half back on the hot shade. Only breathing sounded in his earpiece.

“Perhaps you're forgetting who you're speaking to, Abdullah,” Jamal said, and then spit out the bug. “If you cease to please me, I will unmake you as easily as I made you.”

“You did not make me. I did not need your interference. I could have done this without you.”