Finding North (3 page)

When the doctor stood to
speak with her rescuer, she focused on her breathing again.
Unbidden, the cricket’s words returned.

“
You do better work when
you collaborate,” the cricket had said.

The thought was all
consuming. Alex lost track of what was happening around her until
the female Marine helped her to a sitting position. The doctor
nodded to Alex and moved away.

The man who swam laps
knelt down next to her.

“
Dad,” she said. The
coughing and choking had left her voice hoarse and weak.

“
Pumpkin,” retired Senator
and General Patrick Hargreaves said.

“
You . . .
hate . . . swim,” she rasped.

He grinned.

“
Let’s get you home,” he
said. “You have IV antibiotics in the fridge.”

“
No,” she
croaked.

“
What?” he
asked.

“
They . . .
will . . . kill . . . you,” she
croaked out each word. “Mom.”

She swallowed hard, closed
her eyes, and looked away from him. She felt him near
her.

“
Tried . . .once . . .,” she
croaked, “ . . .already.”

“
Yes, they did,” he
said.

“
No,” she said.

She felt herself lifted
from the ground. Her father carried her from the pool like she was
a tiny baby. Beaten by the pool, she was too exhausted to fight
him. She heard more than one young soldier offer to take the burden
of her from him.

Her father
refused.

Wearing only his speedo,
her father carried her out of the facility. His security team
opened the car door, and he set her inside. He took a warm towel
and Alex’s gear from an Army private who’d followed them
out.

“
Dry off,” Patrick
ordered.

He gave her a towel, and
she wrapped it around herself like a blanket.

“
They will kill you,” she
repeated.

“
She’s freezing,” Patrick
said. “Keep her warm until I’m back.”

The door to the small
limousine slammed closed, and Patrick returned to the recreation
center. Patrick’s driver turned up the heater fan. Hot air blew on
her wet skin.

“
Rest,” the driver said in
French. “You are safe here. Please, get dressed.”

Alex nodded. Shivering,
she made an effort to pull on her sweater. The battle between her
wet body and the thick wool took the last of her energy. She gave
up on everything else. She leaned against the window and closed her
eyes. She focused on the luxurious sensation of air moving down her
throat and into her lungs. Minutes passed, and she
dozed.

“
Your team has been
called.” The driver’s voice woke her. “They are on their way. I’d
suggest that you dress and . . .”

The driver held out a
small bottle of a caffeinated energy drink. Alex took the bottle
and drank it down. She pulled her sweats over her cold legs and
managed to stuff her feet into her faux-fur-lined winter boots. In
the rearview mirror, the driver pointed to his head. She yanked her
swimming cap from her head.

“
Where’s . . .” She swallowed the sound of her
sore voice. She looked down at the silicone cap. “My
dad?”

“
He’ll be here,” the
driver said. “As you can imagine, there’s a lot of back slapping
that goes on.”

Alex looked at the driver
in the rearview mirror.

“
1999, sir,” the driver
said. “Nigeria.”

“
Roux,” Alex croaked.
“Farron.”

“
Oui
,” the driver said.

“
Nice . . .
see you . . .” Alex gave a soft smile to the man
she’d rescued all those years ago.
“How . . .?

She gestured to the
car.

“
You should know that we
in French Intelligence have been working night and day,” he said.
“You’ve been out of touch.”

“
Oui
,” she said.

“
There is a report
awaiting your attention,” the driver said. “We have been able to
detain the bookseller. His interrogation will begin
today.”

Alex nodded. Her father’s
personal Secret Service agent opened the door, and her father got
in. He sat across from her in the limousine. His bodyguard got in
the front passenger seat.

“
They . . .
kill . . . me,” she said. Her voice was soft and
hoarse. The driver gave her a bottle of water. She smiled her
thanks. “They . . . kill . . . Max.
You have . . . to . . .
no . . . contact.”

“
That’s ridiculous,”
Patrick said. “Pershing told me he thought this is what you were
doing. It’s absolutely preposterous.”

“
If
they . . . kill . . .
us . . . all . . .,” Alex took sips
of water between the words,
“ . . .we . . .
will . . . fail.”

“
At what?” Patrick
asked.

“
Save . . .
the . . . world,” Alex nodded.

Patrick laughed. When she
looked away from him, he stopped laughing. He looked at the side of
her face for a long moment.

“
You’re serious,” Patrick
said.

Alex pointed to the
driver.

“
Farron?” Patrick
asked.

“
We have determined that
there is an eighty-three percent chance that the Fey is correct,”
the driver said in English. “They will kill all three of you, and,
in the Fey’s words, ‘set the world on fire.’”

“
Eighty-three percent,”
Patrick scowled. “What are the chances of having male-female
single-zygote children?”

“
While that’s an
interesting question, it is quite a bit off point,” the driver
said.

Alex swallowed hard and
forced herself to speak.

“
Cooper’s father gleaned
three facts from the Russian Paperclips,” Alex said. Her voice came
out in a low whisper. “The first is that there is a group of people
who wish to keep the world at a certain level.”

“
A certain level?” Patrick
asked.

“
A small ruling class and
a large, expendable class of workers, which they call ‘chattel,’”
Alex said. She tried to clear her throat but ended up coughing.
They waited until she was done. “When they determine the world is
too peaceful, too connected, or too egalitarian, they burn
everything down. When it looks like the peasant class might
actually overthrow the ruling class, they burn everything
down.”

“
Revolution,” Patrick
said.

“
Revolution, world war,
destruction of cultures, civil war, extremists on both sides,” Alex
shrugged. Her father’s bodyguard gave her a cough drop, which she
unwrapped and popped in her mouth. She nodded and smiled her
thanks. “Every time their ‘chattel’ connects with each other in a
powerful ‘we,’ they take civilization back to the dark ages. Every
world transition has their fingerprints on it.”

“
But why?” Patrick
asked.

“
Real profit is made
during growth cycles,” Alex said. “That’s the second thing Cooper’s
father uncovered. They bring the world to its knees so that they
can profit from the up cycle.”

“
And the third?” Patrick
asked.

“
They communicate in
Linear A,” Alex said. “Because it’s a symbolic language, it’s all
around us. We don’t recognize it. So much so that our brains don’t
even register it. They can communicate with each other right in the
open.”

“
And the core group?”
Patrick asked.

“
No one knows,” Alex said,
and cleared her throat.

“
I’ve never believed in
conspiracies, Alex,” Patrick said.

“
No one gets along well
enough to keep a secret,” Alex joined Patrick in finishing his
statement. Alex continued, “I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. Think
of it more as a way of communicating within a relatively small
family. We can’t see it because we don’t realize it’s
language.”

“
You think a single family
is involved?” Patrick asked. “Something like the tribe of Minoans
of Crete?”

“
I have no idea,” Alex
said. “I’m not even sure that we’re not reading everything the
wrong way. Cooper’s father was a Korean War vet. He’d spent a
couple years in a camp. He had terrible nightmares and PTSD. He
could have misinterpreted everything based on his own
hypervigilance and paranoia. But . . .”

“
They are trying to kill
you,” Patrick said.

“
Probably,” Alex said. “It
also could be someone else who’s trying to kill me.”

She nodded to the
driver.

“
Unlikely,” Farron said.
“There’s a better-than-ninety-percent chance that the book
precipitated the murders of the Fey Special Forces
Team.”

“
If we don’t decipher
Linear A, we’re all in danger,” Alex said. “If you, Max, and I are
killed, there’s no one to figure this out. With the rise of the
Internet, the demand for democracy in the Middle East, Africa,
across Asia, they’re close to completing a cycle. They will burn
everything down. Again.”

“
But . . .”

“
When the world was at
peace, and the large underclass of people gained equal footing with
each other, they launched the Inquisitions,” Alex said. “We
estimate they killed between six and ten million people, mostly
women. They reduced their ‘chattel’ population and kept ‘chattel’
numbers low by reducing the number of women capable of
breeding.”

“
A system of repression
designed to protect religious social order,” Patrick paraphrased
French historian Jean-Baptiste Guirand.

“
Hundreds of years of
torture, rape, and murder destroyed the peace and trust between
people,” Alex said. “The church’s Inquisition was followed by the
Roman Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, the Portuguese
Inquisition, and whatever else in the name of God and country. In
the last century, we’ve seen this cycle over and over again in
Africa.”

“
There’s no profit in
peace,” Patrick said.

“
There’s no profit in
peasants connecting with each other,” Alex said. “And, who knows? I
may be one hundred percent wrong about this. We may decipher Linear
A and discover that this group fights for peace. Maybe they’re
behind the UN efforts, the peace talks, and the
crimes-against-humanity trials. Someone has supported those
efforts. It could be them.”

“
Is that possible?”
Patrick asked.

“
Anything is possible,”
Alex said. “We won’t know until we decipher the
language.”

They fell silent for a
moment, each wrapped in their own thoughts. A fast moving armored
SUV rolled into the parking lot. The vehicle pulled up next to the
limousine. Captain Christopher “White Boy” Blanco got out of the
passenger seat and went to Alex’s Jeep CJ.

“
That’s my ride,” Alex
said.

“
Listen,” Patrick said.
“About the article.”

Alex turned to look at
him.

“
I have searched my mind,
body, and soul,” Patrick said. “I have spoken with those who know
me best and some who love me the least. I have to tell you
that . . .”

Patrick reached across to
hold her hands.

“
I’m sorry,” Patrick said.
“I was so caught up in my own pride for you that
I . . . didn’t think. And, you’re right. No one
knows more than I what happens to people who investigate Linear A.
It’s why my teams have never bothered. We had enough to do without
taking on some ancient death curse.”

Alex gave him a soft
smile.

“
I’ve always been so
proud, so in awe of you and Max that I . . .,”
Patrick said. “I was careless, and I’m sorry.”

“
Thank you for that,” Alex
said. “I’d like to say that we’re super angry about it, but we love
you.”

“
And your team, the Fey
Special Forces Team, I . . .” Patrick’s face flushed
with emotion.

“
We don’t know how they
fit into all of this,” Alex said.

“
But they do?”

Alex gave him a sad
nod.

“
Now, we’re trying to save
your life. Mom’s,” Alex said.

“
I’d give my life for
yours in a heartbeat,” Patrick said. “Just as I know you’d give
your life for your children. Any parent would do the same. Plus,
I’m willing to take a seventeen-percent chance that, together, we
can solve this riddle in ways we could never do
separately.”

Alex turned to look at
him.

“
I’m not willing to take
that risk,” Alex said.

“
I’m an old man, Alex,”
Patrick said. “I’ve lived more than thirty years longer than my
father and forty years past my grandfather. If this is the thing
that kills me, so be it.”

“
And Mom?” Alex asked.
“Are you willing to risk her life because some asshole can’t
imagine sharing even a penny of his wealth and power?”

“
Not being involved in
your life is killing your mother now,” Patrick said. “Our lives
have changed so much in the last year. We’re not in Washington
anymore. She has only a few friends here. She wanted to be here to
be with her children; she’d planned to spend this time in her life
with her grandchildren. Not seeing you . . . the
other kids . . . well, let’s just say they are loyal
to you. She’s a shadow of herself.”