23

They found Weezy sitting up in bed sipping water through a straw.

“Wow,” she said as they gaped at her from the doorway. “Three visitors at once. I must be popular.”

Jack immediately glanced at Harris to gauge his reaction and saw joy and relief in his eyes.

All right, so the guy really cared about Weezy. Why didn’t Jack feel he could trust him?

Eddie rushed forward and embraced her. “Weez! When did you wake up?”

“About an hour ago.”

Jack noticed that her IV was still running but her catheter bag was gone. He hung back as Harris moved to her bedside and grabbed her hand.

“Louise . . . I was so worried.”

“Kevin.” She looked puzzled. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“When you didn’t answer your calls—”

“How was . . . Europe?”

“Everything we hoped for.”

“Excellent.” She looked past him and smiled as her dark eyes focused on Jack’s. “You look so different, Jack. I never imagined you with a beard.” She held out her hands. “I’d never recognize you except for your eyes. They haven’t changed a bit.”

Feeling awkward, he stepped forward and grasped her hands. Her skin was smooth and warm. He squeezed. She squeezed back, releasing a flood of childhood memories—school buses, endless bike rides through lazy summers, and the Pine Barrens . . . he could almost smell those trees.

“You . . . you still look like Weezy.”

She released his hand. “But more of me than you last saw.”

“You exaggerate. You look great.”

No kidding. The extra weight looked kind of good on her.

She looked at Eddie. “Did Jack find me?”

Eddie nodded. “Yes, he did.”

“I knew he would.” She beamed.

“Do you know what happened to you?”

“Car accident, I’m told. I have no memory of it.” She pointed to her stitched-up scalp. “But I think I’ll have a nice souvenir.”

Jack thought her tone seemed a little too light. Was she putting on a show? Hiding fear?

“What about leading up to it?”

She shook her head, then quickly pressed her hands against her temples and closed her eyes. “Note to self: Don’t shake head.” Opening them again, she said, “I remember leaving the house and heading for an Internet café and that’s about it.”

“Retrograde amnesia,” Jack said. “Happens with head trauma.”

“Right. You know about that?”

He winked at her. “I read it.”

That had been her mantra when they were kids. She’d spout some tidbit of arcane lore and whenever Jack or anyone else would ask how she knew, that was what she’d say.

But he hadn’t read it. Through experience over the past year he’d learned too much about head trauma.

“Were you being followed or chased?” Harris said.

“I have no idea.”

“Excuse me,” said an accented voice from the doorway.

Jack saw a lean black man in scrubs pushing a gurney ahead of him.

“I must take”—he glanced at a yellow slip in his hand—“Louise for an x-ray. Please step aside.”

They complied and watched him wheel the gurney up to the bedside and pull the curtain. They waited, heard a few grunts of effort from her, then the curtain reopened and Weezy, propped up on pillows, was wheeled toward the door. She waved as she went by.

“I think I’m going to head home,” Harris told her. “A million things piled up while I was away. Now that I know you’re safe, I can concentrate on other stuff.”

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Do we ever. I’ll be in touch as soon as I get home.”

When she was gone, Jack turned to Harris. “You might be followed.”

He grinned. “If so, I’ll lose them. No one’s tailing me home.”

Jack had said it for effect. He figured if Harris was such a big shot in the Truther movement, whoever was interested in Weezy already knew where he lived. But then again, maybe not.

After Harris shook hands with both of them and left, Jack turned to Eddie.

“Did you give the hospital your address?”

“Not yet, but—”

“Your phone?”

“No, but I will before I—”

“Don’t. It can be traced to your home.”

“I’ve got to leave a number. What if something happens?”

“You’ve got mine. Give them that.”

“But—?”

“It’s prepaid. No billing address connected.”

Eddie nodded and headed for the door. “Good thinking.” He stopped at the door. “You’re not an appliance repairman, are you.”

“You’re wasting time.”

A few seconds after he left, a smiling Dr. Gupta showed up with a binder in his hand. “Well, well. We’ve had—” He stared at the empty bed. “Where is Mrs. Myers?”

“Down to x-ray.”

Gupta frowned and flipped through the chart. “That cannot be. I ordered no studies, and besides, her chart would go with her. I have it here.”

Jack had started moving on “That cannot be.” He ducked out into the hall and checked the elevator area. They would have had to take the gurney by elevator. No sign of her there. Already gone. She wouldn’t be making a fuss either. She’d be compliant until she realized something was wrong. By then she’d be out of earshot.

Jack took the stairs as fast as he dared. He lifted his shirt and pulled his Glock 19 from the nylon holster nestled in the small of his back. He tended to keep the chamber empty when he was walking around town. He worked the slide to remedy that now, then returned the weapon to its holster.

They’d want to move her off premises ASAP. They couldn’t use the lobby because she’d make a scene. Needed a back way.

The hospital had to have a loading dock for food and medical deliveries. After five now. Probably not much activity in those areas.

Okay, if he were going to spirit someone out of here, how would he do it? How about putting her in a box and loading her on a truck? Good, but someone might want to know what he was removing from the hospital. Could be stealing supplies, drugs.

Better: Pretend to be transporting a body to a funeral home. Perfect. People died all the time in hospitals and they weren’t taken out through the front door. The two main entrances were on Fifth and Madison, so most likely the loading area would be on a side street.

But how to get there? The medical center covered three square blocks.

He’d have to ask. He hated asking directions.

When he reached the main-floor level he stopped the first maintenance worker he saw.

“The undertakers are taking my mother’s body to the funeral home and I need to catch them before they go. Where do I find them?”

The guy sent him down another level. He had to ask again along the way, but finally reached an open receiving area where he spotted the black guy rolling the gurney off the edge of the dock into the open rear of a waiting panel truck. The guy with the bleach-blond hair was helping him. A black body bag lay on the gurney, held in place by duct tape. Whatever was inside the bag was moving.

What? No security?

And then, to his right, he spotted a portly figure slumped over a desk, blood leaking from his scalp.

Jack looked around for somebody, anybody to intervene. No one in sight. That left it all up to him. It meant exposing himself—something he never wanted to do—but he couldn’t let this go down.

He pulled his Glock and kept it pressed against his thigh as he hurried toward the pair. He’d loaded the magazine with alternating hardball and hollowpoint rounds. The top round was always a hollowpoint, so one of those was in the chamber now.

When he came within ten feet he called out, “Hey! I need a word with you guys.”

The head end of the body bag lifted and movements within the bag increased to a frenzy. The blond guy looked up. Shock of recognition flattened his features and then he was reaching inside his jacket. Jack was a half dozen feet away now and saw a pistol grip jutting from a shoulder holster.

“Let’s not,” he said.

Gunfire was the last thing he wanted.

But blondie didn’t even hesitate, so Jack raised the Glock and shot him twice in the chest. Then he swiveled and put two into the black guy who was fumbling for something under his scrubs top.

A look back at blondie showed him collapsing backward, his arms out-flung, his hands empty. The black guy was ninety degrees into a spin move as he hit the floor.

Neither moved again.

Shit. Why were some people such dumbasses? He’d have to put it in high gear now.

With the terrific din of the four reports echoing through the loading area, Jack returned the Glock to its holster and grabbed the weapon from blondie’s holster—a Tokarev 9, from the look of it. He had no idea what the rest of the day would bring. No such thing as too many guns.

Then he slid the gurney the rest of the way into the back of the panel truck and unzipped the top of the body bag. Weezy raised her head and looked at him, eyes wide, mouth sealed with duct tape. He pulled the tape off, then jumped out and slammed the rear doors. The truck was running. He slid behind the wheel, slammed into gear, and roared up the ramp.

“Jack!” Weezy cried from behind him. “My God, Jack! What just—ow!”

The acceleration slammed her gurney against the rear doors. He’d neglected to lock its wheels.

“Sorry.”

The gurney rolled forward again and struck the back of his seat when he stopped at the street. Only one choice here: left turn toward Fifth Avenue. He had to stop at the red light on Fifth so he used the opportunity to pull out his Spyderco and climb into the rear compartment.

“Jack?” Her expression bordered on panic. “What just happened?”

“You almost got kidnapped.”

He opened the bag further and saw that Weezy’s arms were duct taped against her sides.

“I know, but—”

“Hush.” He cut one of the bonds, freeing her left arm. He saw blood on her skin. “They cut you?”

She glanced at it. “He ripped out my IV. It’s okay. Jack—”

“Cut the rest while I drive,” he said, handing her the knife. “But stay there and don’t touch anything.”

He locked the gurney wheels and hopped back into the front just as the light turned green.

“Jack,” she said, as he turned onto Fifth Avenue, “I heard shots. Who was shooting?”

Change the subject, he thought.

“Who were those men?” he said.

“I don’t know! Thank God you came along. But those shots—the blond man was carrying a gun—I saw it under his jacket when he was taping me up. Did he shoot at you?”

“Um, no.”

“Then how . . . ?”

As Jack turned onto the wide expanse of East 96th and headed for the FDR Drive, he heard a thump from the back. In the rearview mirror he saw Weezy extricating herself from the body bag. A few seconds later, wrapped in a sheet from the gurney, she began wriggling over the back of the seat.

“Stay down.”

“No. I need to be up here with you.”

She landed on the passenger side, then adjusted the sheet around her. She had no street clothes, just the hospital gown and the sheet. She sat there trembling.

“Okay, but don’t touch anything. Don’t leave any prints.”

“They were kidnapping me.” Her voice shook as the words tumbled out. “Really kidnapping me. I thought I was going to x-ray but instead I was wheeled into this little room where another man was waiting with these rolls of tape. A memory came back then. I’d seen him before—yesterday, I guess it was—when he followed me from an Internet café. Before I could say a word they taped my mouth shut and wrapped me up, then put me in that body bag. I could barely move and it was hard to breathe. I’d imagined the possibility, but the reality . . .” She shuddered.

“Easy, easy,” he said. “They failed. That’s the important thing.”

She was shaking her head. “This has gotten way out of control. I—” She fixed her dark gaze on Jack. “They did fail, didn’t they. I heard shots. And then the next thing I know, you’re unzipping the body bag.”

“I just happened along at the right time.”

“No. It’s more than that. Jack, are you carrying a gun? Did you shoot those men?”

“You don’t mince words, do you?”

“And you don’t answer questions. A simple yes or no, please.”

Tell her? She seemed to have a pretty good idea what the answer would be. And later on, when she’d inevitably hear about two men shot to death early this evening at Mount Sinai Medical Center, she’d put it all together anyway.

She must have taken his hesitation as a refusal to answer.

She sighed and said, “In all my surfing I’ve picked up chatter on New York sites here and there over the years about a guy who hires out to fix things. Some people call him ‘the repairman,’ others call him ‘Repairman Jack’—”

“Oh, swell name.”

She smiled. “You still say ‘swell.’ Just like when we were kids. That was out of date even then.” Her eyes unfocused for a second, as if she were detouring down memory lane, then she was back. “Anyway, some just call him ‘Jack.’ But somehow—don’t ask me how or why—out of all the Jacks in the world, I knew it was you.”

“Me? That’s crazy.”

“I heard about this guy fixing situations and I flashed back to Carson Toliver’s locker and all the tricks someone pulled on him, and suddenly I realized you were behind that. Admit that, at least, will you?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, that was me.”

“Why?”

“Because he hurt you.”

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. When he heard a sob he snapped a look at her. A tear squeezed out from behind her closed lids.

“You okay?”

She straightened and wiped her eyes with a corner of the sheet.

“I’m fine. You drove Carson Toliver crazy and made a fool of him . . . for me?”

He reached over and squeezed her hand. “You can’t let someone hurt your friends and get away with it. Especially not your best friend.”

She looked like she was going to cry as her voice teetered on the edge of a sob. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

“Couldn’t tell anybody. That would bring a lot of attention, and I wasn’t looking for any.”

“I found your Web site last year and left you a message. You called me back and I recognized your voice. As soon as I heard it I hung up, but I knew it was you.”

Jack vaguely remembered something like that. He’d just assumed the person had changed her mind. Happened now and then.

“But back to the questions at hand: Are you or are you not carrying a gun, and did you or did you not use it back there?”

There she sat in an open-back hospital gown under a clumsily wrapped sheet, bleeding from an IV site, recent victim of an attempted abduction, yet back in control of herself and trying to control the situation.

He gave a mental shrug: What the hell.

“Yes and yes.”

For a few seconds she seemed taken aback, then, “You shot those two men?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you killed them?”

He’d hit them twice each square in the chest with both a hollowpoint and a hardball. The hollowpoint would do the most damage, expanding upon impact and shredding lungs, major vessels, and the heart.

“Yes.”

“Did they try to shoot you?”

“The blond guy was going for his gun but I already had mine out.”

“What about the other one?”

“I didn’t see a gun on him. But he might have had one.”

“ ‘Might’ have had a gun? You didn’t know?”

“No.”

“But you shot him anyway?”

“If he didn’t have one now, he’d probably have one the next time we met. And he’d probably want to get even for his friend.”

“But you didn’t know if you’d ever see him again.”

He glanced at her. “Whoever’s looking for you, I don’t think they’re going to quit. Do you?”

She looked out the window, then back at him. “No. I guess not.”

“Well, I’m going to do my damnedest to keep them from finding you.”

“You don’t need to be involved.”

“But I do. And anyway, the point is moot: I am involved. So therefore my chances of running into a guy who wants to kill me are kind of high. I try to avoid situations like that. Sometimes you have to be proactive.”

“So . . . you . . . just . . . killed him.”

Truth was, he hadn’t thought twice about it. Hadn’t thought even once, really. He’d seen them wheeling Weezy away and he’d clicked into expediency mode. The last thing he’d wanted was to shoot anyone—too messy, too noisy. He realized now that he’d instinctively positioned himself so that if a hardball round went through one of them, it wouldn’t hit Weezy. They hadn’t left him much choice.

Them or us.

But her choice of words irked him.

“Don’t say ‘just.’ There’s no ‘just’ killing someone. And these weren’t ‘just’ someones. They were someones who were abducting you. I don’t know what their plans were. Maybe they just wanted to question you. Maybe they were going to question you and kill you. I don’t know. I may never know. But I do know one of them was going for his gun. And I also know that neither of those two will be trying that again.”

“You’re not the Jack I knew. You’re scary.”

“I’m nothing of the sort. I would have been perfectly happy to resolve that little problem without fireworks, but I wasn’t given a choice. And once the guns come out, you need to keep firing until no one’s shooting back. It’s not pleasant, but it’s the way it is.” He glanced at her. “My turn at twenty questions: Why are they after you?”

She sighed. “It’s—”

She winced and cupped a hand over the stitches in her scalp.

“What’s wrong?”

She spoke through clenched teeth. “My head. I don’t think I’m supposed to be up and about yet.”

Jack knew she was right. But he couldn’t see taking her to another hospital.

“What do you want me to do?”

She lifted her head and lowered her hand. “It’s passed. I’ll be okay once I get home. I live—”

“—in Jackson Heights. I know. I’ve been there.”

She made a face. “Ew. Did Eddie let you in? Why were you there?”

He told her about how her finger had been tracing “burn my house” on the sheet.

“ ‘Burn my house’? Why would I want you to burn my house?”

“That’s what we wanted to know. That’s why we went out there.”

“No way. That’s been my greatest fear—that someone would burn all the hard evidence I’ve collected. If anything, I’d be trying to tell you ‘don’t let them burn my house.’ Maybe only the second half was coming through.”

“Well, whatever, it sent us out there and I saw your collection. What—?”

Jack’s phone rang then: Eddie, and he sounded upset.

“Jack! Where are you? Weezy’s gone and all hell’s broken loose here! There’s a rumor of a shooting—”

“I’ve got Weezy. She’s safe. But you might not be if you hang around the hospital. Go home and stay there. I’ll contact you later.”

He hung up and turned off the phone. Little chance of Eddie being followed now. Whoever was behind this probably thought they had Weezy in their grasp, so no need to follow her brother. But that would change once they found out their men were dead.

He glanced at Weezy. “That was Eddie. He’ll be okay. But you . . . that’s a different story. Who’s after you?”

“It’s a long, long story.”

“I know some of it. I had a talk with your pal Harris. I gather from all this that you know something about the nine/eleven attacks that someone wants kept quiet.”

Her lips tightened. “What did he tell you?”

“About the puts and calls in the Cardoza account and how he traced him back to a Pakistani named Bashar Sheikh.”

“Is that his name? Bashar Sheikh?” Excitement seemed to overcome her fear. “He found him?”

Jack nodded. “Says he has a photo and the guy looks familiar. He’s counting on you to identify him.”

“Wonderful!” She clapped her hands. “I hope I can.”

“Still have the eidetic memory?”

She nodded. “Sometimes it’s a blessing, sometimes it’s a curse, but, yeah, I still have it.”

Jack reached the FDR and turned downtown, heading for the Queensboro Bridge.

“What do you know, Weez? Why are people after you?”

“That’s just it: I don’t know. Not yet. But I’m getting close.”

“To what?”

“To why the Trade Towers were knocked down.”

Jack suppressed a groan. “You’re not going to tell me it wasn’t al Qaeda, are you?”

“Oh, al Qaeda members flew the planes, no question about that. And they did it for all the reasons al Qaeda has stated. They’re very up front and honest about that. But I believe someone or some group with another agenda had bin Laden’s ear and was pushing him toward those particular targets and that particular method of attack.”

“ ‘Another Pearl Harbor’?”

“No. It’s not the government. We’d have had dozens of whistle-blowers by now if it were. It has to be a secret organization—or organizations. Though I have no proof, I believe the Dormentalists are peripherally involved, but I’m pretty sure the Septimus Order is in the thick of it.”

“The Order? They’re pretty tight with the Kickers these days.”

“I know, but the Kickers didn’t exist back on nine/eleven.”

Jack shook his head to clear it. He was falling under the spell of her words.

“What possible reason could the Septimus Order have for bringing down the Trade Towers?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“Wait—does this have anything to do with your Secret History of the World?”

“It’s not my Secret History, Jack. It’s the Secret History. And I’m surprised you still remember it.”

Oh, he remembered it, all right. It had been hanging over his life like a Joe Btfsplk cloud. And he’d met a guy who’d lived through most of it.

“Let’s just say I’ve had a change of heart and leave it at that for now. But what could possibly be worth all those thousands of lives?”

“That’s what I’m trying to learn, and that’s what someone doesn’t want me to find out. But I do know this: It all seems to hinge upon one man, a shadowy, elusive figure named Wahid bin Aswad. I call him The Man Who Wasn’t There.”

Jack wasn’t following. “Well, if he wasn’t there—”

“Oh, yes, he was. It’s just that a process has been under way for years to erase all evidence of his existence.”

Jack took the on-ramp to the Queensboro Bridge. Not far to Weezy’s house from here.

“How . . . ?”

“You’ll need to see to believe.”

Jack leaned back, wondering. Sometimes you had to see in order to believe, and sometimes you had to believe in order to see.

Which would this be?