The Sign (31 page)

Matt was still absorbing every word of Maddox’s bio in silence. After a moment, he said, “Sure.”

Jabba turned it off as Matt fired up the car and pulled away.

He looked over at Matt. “So?”

Matt nodded to himself, his eyes a bit distant, his expression dour. “So now we know who we’re dealing with.”

“Dude, the man’s got a private army,” Jabba pleaded, his pitch doing its worry rise. “We’ve got a white Camry and a handgun with no bullets in it.”

“Then we’ve got some catching up to do,” Matt replied. “But let’s see what Reece’s wife has to say first.”

“YOU’RE SURE?”

Maddox wasn’t shouting. In fact, his voice was unnaturally calm, given the news he’d just been given. But his displeasure was coming through loud and clear to his contact at Fort Meade.

“Absolutely,” came the answer. “Komlosy’s phone signal popped up on the grid for just over a minute before powering down.”

Maddox walked over to his office’s window and looked down. Nothing unusual caught his eye. The parking lot and the street beyond were glacially quiet.

Two unexpected appearances from Sherwood in as many days, he fumed. The second one in the immediate vicinity of his office.

The man was good.

A bit too good for Maddox’s liking.

“How long ago?” he asked.

“It just went dead.”

Maddox seethed quietly. “Can’t you track him with his phone switched off?”

“Looking at his contract, it seems he’s got an iPhone, a 3G one,” the
NSA
monitoring agent told him. “If he keeps it on long enough, I can remotely download some burst software onto it that’ll let me track it even if it’s powered down.”

“I need you to do better than that,” Maddox insisted.

“We’re working on some stuff. But for now, it’ll get better every time he switches it on. The tracking software will have a head start on him; it’ll keep adding data every time he powers up. We won’t need as long to get a lock.”

“Okay. Let me know the second it powers up again,” the Bullet ordered. “And get that download done as soon as you get a chance.” With that, he hung up, stuffed the phone into his pocket, checked his watch, and glared out his window again.

Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt

“
D
on’t we have anyone who can get here sooner?” Dalton asked. “Where’s the damn sixth fleet when you need it?”

They were standing around uneasily by the base of the keep—Gracie, Finch, Dalton, Brother Ameen, and the abbot. An expectant hum of voices reverberated across the plain, beyond the monastery’s thick walls. Closer by, the imam’s hateful voice droned on from the people carrier’s radio, an angry, never-ending call to arms that was echoed on countless other radios outside the walls. “Yeah, that’ll look real good,” Finch commented wryly. “American troops flying in to safeguard a Christian holy man in a sea of angry Muslims. That’ll clinch the hearts-and-minds battle right there.”

“We need to get Father Jerome out of here,” Gracie said.

“I agree,” Finch said, “but how?”

“What about bringing a chopper in to whisk him out?” she asked.

“Where’s it gonna land?” Finch queried. “There’s nowhere wide enough for it to put down, not inside the monastery’s walls.”

Gracie pointed up at the keep. “What about up there?

Finch shook his head. “The roof ’s not strong enough. It’s hundreds of years old. There’s no way it can hold the weight. And I don’t think winching him out is gonna work either. He’s too old to take that, and even if he could, someone could take a potshot at him.”

Dalton slid a forlorn nod over at the keep behind them. “So what do we do? Bunker down?” He pointed up at the keep’s second-floor drawbridge, sitting above them. “This thing still work?” he asked the abbot, only half-joking. The fortified keep, with its food stores, water well, library, and top-floor chapel, had been used as a refuge in times of attack, but that hadn’t happened in over a thousand years.

“No, but . . . we should just stay here and wait for the security forces to arrive. They’re bound to send them in now. Besides, there aren’t just Muslims out there,” the abbot reassured them. “A lot of them out there, they’re our people. Christians. They’ll defend Father Jerome if they have to.”

“I’m sure they would, but that’s not the point,” Gracie pressed. “It’d be better to get him out of here before anything like that happens.

To make sure it doesn’t.”

“There might be another way out,” Brother Ameen offered.

All eyes turned swiftly to him. “How?” Gracie asked.

“The tunnel,” he said, turning to the abbot with a questioning look.

“There’s a tunnel? Where to?” Gracie asked.

“It goes from here to the monastery closest to us—the one we drove past on the way in.”

“The Monastery of Saint Bishoi,” the abbot confirmed.

“What, the one across the field?” Gracie was pointing northeast, trying to visualize the second monastery’s relative position from when she’d last seen it, from the roof of the
qasr
.

The abbot nodded. “Yes. The tunnel is older than this monastery. You see, our monastery was built over what was once the monk Bishoi’s hermitage, the cave he used to retreat to. Because of the constant threat from invaders, the monks decided to build an escape route from Saint Bishoi’s monastery, and they chose his old cave as the exit point. Years later, as the danger receded, a small chapel was built over his cave, and that small chapel eventually grew into this monastery.”

“You think it’ll still get us there?” Finch asked.

“The last time anyone went down there was years ago, but it was clear then. I don’t see why it should be any different now,” the abbot replied. “We haven’t had any earthquakes or anything like that.”

Gracie glanced doubtfully at Finch. Still, it was all they had.

“If we can make it across, can we get a car to drive us from there? Discreetly?” she asked.

The abbot thought about that for a moment, then looked around at the driver of the Previa and the others, smoking nervously as they listened to the radio. He stepped over to Yusuf and spoke to him in Arabic. Yusuf replied, then the abbot turned back to Gracie. “Yusuf’s brother-in-law also drives a car like his. If he can use your phone to call him, we can get him to meet you at Bishoi.”

“Okay, but then what? Where do we go?” Dalton asked. “The embassy?”

“It’ll be the same thing there,” Ameen put in. “Maybe even worse. It’s safer to fly him out of the country.”

Finch frowned, thinking ahead, stumbling over the logistics. “Easier said than done. Does Father Jerome even have a passport?”

“We have to sneak him out,” Gracie opined. “If anyone sees him, it’ll get complicated.”

“He can use my passport,” the abbot offered. “With his robe on and with his hood down, they won’t look too closely. And Ameen will be with you to deflect any questions.”

Gracie looked to Finch for approval. He thought about it quickly, then nodded. “Okay, it’s worth a shot. I’ll call D.C.,” he told her, “see how quickly they can get a plane over to us.” He turned to the monks. “How long do you think this tunnel is? Half a kilometer maybe?”

“I’m not sure,” the abbot said. “Maybe a bit more.”

Finch frowned. “We’re not going to be able to lug all our gear through.” He turned to Dalton. “Let’s bring it all down. We’ll grab as much as we can.”

The speech on the car radio flared up, the speaker’s voice rising fiercely. Gracie flashed on iconic, violent images from the region’s turbulent recent history, all of them fueled by religious fervor—the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the stoning and burning of the Danish embassy in Beirut, the beheadings in Iraq and Afghanistan. She didn’t want to become one of them, not in that sense, anyway.

“We’d better get moving.” She turned to the monk and the abbot. “You need to talk to Father Jerome.”

Ameen nodded. “I’ll go now,” he said, before leaving them and disappearing into the doorway, closely tailed by the abbot.

“THEY’RE
TRYING
TO
GET
HIM
OUT
,” Buscema informed Darby.

“Already? Who?”

“I just got a call from my guy at the network,” the journalist told the reverend. “They’ve still got that news crew there with him, and they’re not waiting for an official reaction. They’re handling him themselves.”

“Of course they are,” Darby chortled. “That inside track’s not exactly bad for their ratings, is it? How are they going to do it?”

“I’m not sure. They’re scrambling to get a plane out to them as soon as possible.”

“Where are they planning on taking him?” Darby asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think they know. They just want him out of there before the whackos rip him to pieces.”

The reverend went silent. After a moment, he exhaled slowly, as if he’d reached a decision, and said, “Let’s bring him here.”

“Here?”

“Hell, yes. This is God’s country, isn’t it?” he boomed.

“It’s not gonna be easy. Everyone else will want him,” Buscema goaded him. “Did you see the rallies in Rome?”

“The pope hasn’t announced his position on this whole thing yet, has he?” An unusual, slight panic creeped into his words.

“No. The Vatican’s not exactly famous for its quick reactions.”

“So where else is he gonna go? France?” Darby scoffed.

“Spain, maybe. He’s from there originally. And the Brits are usually quick to put out the welcome mat for anyone in trouble.”

“No way. We’ve got to get him over here. Besides, like you said,” he added, “he’s polling through the roof. People here want to hear what he has to say.”

“The government hasn’t even made an official statement about him yet.”

“Just as well,” Darby said, gloating. “Gives me a chance to do it myself and save him from ending up with those heathens back east.”

There it is,
Buscema thought. “You want to handle this yourself?” His voice rose with mock surprise.

“God’s sending us a message,” Darby asserted. “I’m going to make sure everyone hears it, loud and clear.”

Buscema went silent for a moment, then said, “If the State Department gives the embassy the green light—and they will—it’ll be over. If you want to make it happen, you’re gonna have to move fast.”

The reverend’s tone was as smooth and sharp as a blade. “Watch me.”

GRACIE
,
DALTON
,
AND
FINCH
had brought the rest of their gear down from the roof of the keep and were now sorting through it in the shade by the entrance to the library. The tunnel would be a long, dark trek through a narrow, dusty passage, and they hadn’t thought they’d be able to take everything with them. The camera and live broadcasting gear and as many of Father Jerome’s journals that they could carry made the cut. Dalton’s skycam rig was almost a casualty of the forced triage before the abbot drafted in a few monks who would accompany them through the passage and help them lug the rest of their gear.

Finch had spoken to Ogilvy, who went to work on rustling up a jet that could fly them out without asking too many questions. They’d still have to get past whatever security checks were in place at the airport, but Finch knew that those controls would be far less stringent for a private plane than they were for commercial flights. Still, they’d have to, pun notwithstanding, wing it at the airport. It didn’t give him too much cause for concern, though. They’d gotten out of trickier places before.

As Finch clicked his backpack shut, Dalton’s observations from earlier were still bouncing around his mind. Something was nagging at him. As Dalton had noted, everything had hinged on the preexistence of the documentary footage. Without it, he thought, none of this would have happened. They certainly wouldn’t have made the trip. Something else was bothering him too. The way the throng surrounding their car had recoiled and given them an opening to back up and return to the safety of the monastery. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was that bothered him—the moment had been a blur of frenzy. Still, something wasn’t right.

He thought again about putting in a call to the documentary’s producer to find out more about how it had all happened. He checked his watch and was about to say something when Dalton, looking around impatiently, said, “Where are these guys? We need to go.”

“I thought Ameen and the abbot went to get him,” Finch answered.

“I’ll see if I can find them,” Gracie offered.

She headed down the courtyard, toward the small building that housed the monks’ cells. Finch watched her go. He wiped the sweat off his brow and paced around for a beat, and decided to use the dead time to reach out to the documentary’s producer. He checked his watch again, made a quick mental calculation of the time difference between Egypt and England, where the producer was based, and found he wouldn’t be waking him up at some ungodly hour. He picked up the satphone, then patted his pockets, looking for his cell phone, only it wasn’t there.

“You seen my BlackBerry?”

Dalton glanced around. “No, why?”

He checked his backpack. “I’ve been thinking about what you were saying. Thought I’d put a call in to the documentary guys.”

“So use the satphone. Your phone doesn’t work here anyway, remember?”

Finch gave him a wiseass grin. “It’s got my contacts list on it, numbnuts.”

Dalton thought about it for a second, then said, “Last I remember, you had it out when we were up there,” pointing at the
qasr
. “Before you took that call on the satphone.”

Finch glanced up at the keep that towered over the monastery’s walled-in courtyard, and frowned. “Must have left it up there while we were packing up,” he said. “Be right back.”

He left Dalton, cut across the courtyard and up to the drawbridge, before disappearing into the keep.

As with each time he entered it, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the glare of the Egyptian sun to the dusty darkness of the windowless, low-ceilinged interior of the keep. He made his way down a passage to the narrow stairs and climbed up.

The keep was deserted, as before. Some of its rooms were used for storage, as the darkness and the thick walls kept the temperature relatively cool; others hadn’t been used for years, if not centuries. The ceilings were low, the windows were nothing more than thin slits cut into the thick walls—not the most inviting place to work, or sleep, neither of which was what it was designed for. He climbed the staircase up three floors and reached the top, then found the small landing with the wooden ladder that led up to the roof.