The Artifact Read online

  Sammy ignored the jibe, scooping Andy up in his arms. “You OK, Princess?”

  “Covered half a dozen wars on the front line and I’m gonna get zapped in the Maine woods like a goddamned deer.”

  He trotted toward the cellar door. “We’re gonna be fine.”

  Andrea squeezed her eyes shut as Sammy carried her down the stairs. “Oh, Sam! I got you into this.”

  “Don’t go down that road,” he said. “It was my choice.”

  Geoff struggled folding the motorized wheelchair, then gave up, dragging it half-open behind him as he dashed down the cellar steps just as the Peugeot crashed into the front steps of the farmhouse at thirty-five miles an hour with enough momentum to flip it hood over trunk against the front door, skidding through the foyer into the parlor, where the exploding shells leveled the old wooden structure in a burst of flames and flying debris that blew the second story and roof soaring a hundred feet into the night sky.

  Five federal agents in three gray sedans with turbo engines, and a minivan with a six-man SWAT team converged on Machias from Bangor and Augusta averaging 70 MPH on dark, winding, secondary roads. When they learned that the airfield manager had gone to a bingo game in a church basement with no phone, they had called area realtors, finally locating the woman who had leased an old farmhouse to four men who built fiberglass canoes in the large barn on the secluded property.

  Paula had instructed one car and the minivan making the 100-mile sprint from Bangor to meet her Gulf Stream flight at the Macias airfield and ordered the remaining vehicles to stop and search all traffic coming in the opposite direction as they proceeded to their destination. Forty-five minutes after leaving the airfield, one of the high-powered sedans reported the apprehension of Eddie’s two-vehicle caravan after a high-speed chase halfway back to the farmhouse and a volley of warning shots encouraged both Mafia vehicles to pull to the side of the road.

  Paula was elated at discovering the manuscripts in the metal case, and immediately called Harrington’s country home in Virginia to notify him of their success. “Well done,” the deputy director told her. “Call me at any hour when your mission is one hundred percent complete.”

  Their weapons confiscated, neither Eddie nor his men would reveal where or how they had come into possession of the ancient document. They were handcuffed to one another and placed under guard by two agents who would hold them for transport to the Bangor jail until their further disposition had been determined, while Paula and her remaining strike force followed the directions of the real estate broker to apprehend the general and his band of traitorous thieves.

  Jerry Bender slowed the Lexus sedan when he saw the flame-borne sparks soaring from the totally engulfed building, and braked to a full stop when he felt the searing heat through the windshield. Paula felt it suffuse her entire body when she emerged from the car to stand helplessly in the amber light of the conflagration. When the other agents gathered behind her, she sent them to reconnoiter around the house and the spark-fed wooden barn burning brightly, in which they discovered a pickup truck and Land Rover. It looked like the Mafia thugs had wasted Callaghan and his people, then set the fire. She could think of no other explanation. They would not be certain of that, however, until forensics sifted through the debris and identified the charred bones of ex-general Callaghan and crew. At least they had confiscated the ancient document. That was, after all, one of her primary objectives. And organized crime had achieved the other. She smiled at the thought of leap-frogging a couple of pay grades. Mission accomplished.

  If Paula had arrived twenty minutes earlier, she would have heard the distant sound of a departing chopper leaning into southwest breeze as the aircraft climbed high into the clear night over the Maine coast. Half an hour, and she would have witnessed several figures shielded by wet blankets from the scouring heat scuttling out of the basement through slanting exterior double doors toward the drooping blades of a darkened helicopter.

  Sammy knew that the aircraft was loaded to capacity, with Geoff in the seat beside him, Callaghan and Andrea strapped in behind them, Palagi and Alvarez squeezed into the last two seats, Gerlach, Bogosian and Franks contorted in the rear baggage area.

  The two pilots had completed an abbreviated checklist in the dim light of the instrument gauges before Sammy revved the engine and took off without lights into the black sky.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Rowe, Massachusetts

  November 2004

  Sammy followed Geoff’s directions from the Maine coast inland to the northwest corner of Massachusetts. In the dim gray of civil dawn, he reduced altitude to 100 feet above tightly-packed snow-dusted conifers on the rolling hills of the Berkshire Mountains.

  At the sound of distant rotor blades, two figures darted around the cleared area in a snowy field, igniting red flares to guide the faint outline of the darkened aircraft down to the center of the plowed area, whose white crust sprouted nubs of flattened grass in the muted pink glow.

  Sammy throttled back as they flew through a narrow valley, where he eased the chopper down to earth, its whirling rotors kicking particles of snow in the air, enveloping the aircraft in a dense white cloud.

  Callaghan turned to Andrea as Sammy shut the engine down, and the pervasive silence of the forest filled the cabin. “Don’t be surprised when you meet Hannah’s sister,” he said.

  “Why wasn’t she at the funeral?”

  “We thought it would generate too much attention. They were identical twins.”

  Cassandra Ogilvie opened the chopper door as ex-corporal Anthony Conté scanned the surrounding woods, holding his Colt XM177 Submachine Gun at the ready, while the copter occupants descended onto the rotary prop-blown snow. As soon as they were gathered under the drooping blades, Geoff and Conté began tying white sheets over the helicopter as Cassandra led the remaining passengers across the field to a narrow path through the trees. Sammy cradled Andrea in his arms, followed in single file by Callaghan, Gerlach, Alvarez, Bogosian and Palagi trailing the group with the motorized wheelchair. Three hundred yards down the path, Cassandra ushered them onto the wide veranda of an imposing two-story lodge constructed of stout logs with two lower sections extending under the trees from either side of the center building.

  Callaghan introduced Cassandra and Conté to Andy and Sam as the exhausted group sat down to a breakfast of ham and eggs prepared by the two lodge occupants, during which the general brought them all up to speed on Hannah’s funeral and the events that occurred during the past twelve hours in coastal Maine.

  Throughout the meal, Andrea scrutinized the lovely, dark-skinned woman seated across from her, the mirror image of the Preacher Lady she had interviewed in Georgia, trying to find some minute difference between the two. Other than a shorter hairdo and a bulky Irish knit sweater that made her seem heavier, the twins were indeed identical. Toward the end of their meal her attention wandered, her eyelids closed and Sammy wheeled her off to one of several bedrooms, followed by the remainder of the Machias contingent that Conté showed to their separate quarters.

  Andrea woke at two P.M. the next day and looked around the strange room noting the rough-hewn furnishings and masculine décor in the meager daylight seeping around the edges of the drawn window shades. She tried to swing her feet to the floor before she remembered, and the feeling of dependence filled her with the impotent anger she had experienced since the symptoms of the disease had worsened. The mornings were always the worst, when her mind had to readjust to her incapacity with nothing to distract it. It was the only time that she gave into the unanswerable, “Why me?” Sure, other people had horrible lives, but that didn’t lessen her anguish. Some people had magnificent lives. Was she such a bad person? She had worked her brains and tail off for twenty-five years reaching for success, searching for the truth under rocks of political smokescreens, hunting for the big story, trying to get…where? and when she found it, the rug got yanked.

  In college, young Andrea Madigan had decided that
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution made infinitely more sense than the Biblical Adam/Eve and Supreme Being who allegedly created them and the universe. No benevolent deity could have allowed all the horrors perpetrated on and by mankind, especially those during the last few centuries of so-called civilized enlightenment. Why pray to a God who ignores us or visits plagues and famines on simple people in a world of plenty? Atrocities like those often committed in the name of religion like the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition; the French, and Bolshevik revolutions, Andersonville during the American Civil War, Stalin, the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese during WW II. Then the recent genocide in Bosnia Herzegovina as the rest of the world had sat back and watched. Now Nigeria and other African atrocities, Muslim terrorists, Iran’s Ahmadinejad and North Korea building atomic bombs.

  In the meantime, she was on her own, as she was convinced everyone was, whether they believed it or not. It must be nice to have a comfortable crutch like God to lean on, but why pray into a vacuum? What we pray for either happens or does not, she believed. Then the rationale: God answered the prayer or denied it for some mysterious reason in His so-called Plan. Bullshit!

  She had decided to make things happen as best she could and let the chips fall. Then why was she crying over her present circumstances? They just seemed so overwhelming. Suddenly life had become stacked against her. No God was going to wake up and bail her out of a situation that He allowed to happen in the first place, that was sure.

  Cassandra knocked on her door and entered with a smiling greeting as she raised the window shades to brighten the room with the pale sunshine of late fall. Andrea’s eyes followed the perplexing twin around the room as she prepared to assist Andy with her waking ablutions, replace her borrowed nightgown with slacks and sweater from her own wardrobe, and prop her in bed with a mug of coffee.

  “Are you ready for breakfast?” Cassandra asked.

  “Sit for a moment, will you?”

  Cassandra wore navy fleece over a gray turtleneck, black slacks and after-ski boots, her thick raven hair cut shorter than Hannah’s, but otherwise disarmingly identical. She dragged a slat-back wooden chair over to Andrea’s bedside and sat, completely relaxed, with an expectant smile.

  “I hope you don’t mind a bit of reportorial curiosity,” Andy whispered.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “Were you in the army with your sister?”

  “I ran a homeless shelter in San Francisco until....”

  “I am so sorry about Hannah.”

  “I was afraid of something like that.”

  “Did you share your sister’s religious beliefs?”

  “Completely.”

  “With all the furor about dismissing organized religions, I never got around to probing her basis for her belief in God. I assume she was Christian.”

  “We are devout followers of Jesus Christ.”

  “It has always puzzled me why inquiring intellectuals fall for that. Christianity is based on the New Testament, which is largely fabricated by scores of ‘Bible Editors’ from the end of the first century to the mid-fourteen hundreds. None of them knew Jesus, heard Him speak, could validate His miracles, parables or sound bites.”

  “We are blessed with Faith.”

  “Faith in fiction?”

  “There are sufficient facts to accept Jesus as the Son of God.”

  “Jesus never said that, Cassandra. He claimed he was the ‘Son of Man,’ which was a reference to an Old Testament phrase meaning the Messiah.”

  Cassandra’s smile was patient, secure in her own cognizance. “Which most of the world believes He was.”

  “Who preached the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God, which has yet to happen. When I first started as a cub reporter in New York, there was a scruffy old bearded man in jester’s cap, sheepskin vest and unlaced boots with a ratty mongrel at Park and 50th, I think. He stood on that corner every day for years proclaiming the end of the world was near, just like Jesus. Everybody called him ‘Moon Dog’.”

  “The stronger our Faith in light of certain Biblical paradoxes, the closer we come to knowing God.”

  “What about the horrors God has visited on or allowed to befall mankind down through the ages, today. Is that an example of your benevolent God under the auspice of Jesus Christ?”

  “God works in mysterious ways,” Cassandra repeated the cliché with a smile. “It is not our place as mere mortals to question them.”

  Andrea moved her head back and forth on her pillow. “I can’t understand how otherwise erudite people can seriously embrace the myths of virgin birth or coming back to life after death.”

  “Since we are discussing difficult issues, what do you think will happen to your soul after death?”

  “Soul is another concept that most religions embrace, and I find hard to digest. Mind and body is all I know. When they die, I will cease to exist, just as I did before birth. As much as I admit to wishing otherwise.”

  “How sad to live a life with no expectation of the reward of immortality. If everyone believed that, crime and sin would be rampant, don’t you think?”

  “More than it is now? Or the corollary could prove true: if we all realized our life on earth was the only chance we’d have, we might try to make the most of it, shuck off materialism and smell the roses.”

  “That sounds more like wishful thinking that conviction.”

  Andrea turned her head to smile directly at Cassandra. “On both our parts.”

  “Few of the difficult articles of Faith are mandatory for believing in God and His earthly Son Jesus.”

  “I suppose if you’ve been brainwashed on this stuff since birth with all the dire consequences of disbelief like hell and eternal damnation built in, it’s difficult to open up to other possibilities.”

  “For the faithful, there are no other possibilities.”

  “Just because you believe, Andrea said, “doesn’t make it true.”

  Late afternoon the same day, they were seated on the deep cushions of sofas and chairs arranged in a conversational group around the living room that occupied the entire first floor middle section of the building. A bearskin rug of thick, brown fur spread before the flaming logs in the walk-in fireplace, a hint of danger lingering in the bared fangs of its gaping mouth and deadly outstretched claws of the slain beast. Trout, deer antlers and the stuffed heads of large game stared with glassy-eyed passivity down from walls of wide rough planking.

  They were refreshed now, settled around the fireplace where thick flames of red and yellow leapt from split logs up a blackened chimney, flickering shadows across the walls and beamed ceiling illuminated by the soft light of oil lamps on low tables strategically positioned next to colonial furniture consisting of deep sofas and upholstered chairs on multi-colored rugs of woven rag. The general and Cassandra sat side by side on the same couch, Geoff and Sam opposite, Andrea in her wheelchair. Four troopers were at work in the adjacent room assembling the translated document, two were outside standing guard.

  Callaghan frowned at Andrea’s question. “I realize you have gone through a great deal for this, but I am not yet prepared for full disclosure to the press.”

  Andrea’s voice was a hoarse whisper, the sibilants sounding like run-on words. “You want Sam to fly me out of here with a half-baked story about some ancient Jewish rebellion?”

  Geoff’s tone sounded reluctant, but firm. “I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere until we say so.”

  “That’s kidnapping!”

  “What are you going to do,” Sam said, “lock us up?”

  “We need to discuss certain options before...,” the general began.

  “That’s not what he asked you, General,” Andrea interrupted. “More to the point, for the umpteenth time, what about my story?”

  “I promised you’d have it when we had properly disposed of the document.”

  “I tracked it down. You’ve had it translated. What is it?” she demanded. “What do you plan to d
o with it?”

  “This is not the appropriate time.”

  Andrea fumbled with her recorder, turned it on, and placed it in her lap. “I demand my story, General! I’ve earned it.”

  Callaghan acknowledged her point. “I can’t deny that, Ms. Madigan. I’ll have to consult Hannah,” he turned to the woman’s twin and reached for her hand. “Sorry. Consult Cassandra and the others.”

  She thought that was baloney. This man was the quintessential military commander, intrepid, focused on his objective, unused to ceding or sharing decisions with anyone. Andy took another, less sensitive tack. “Start with Camp Champion in Kuwait, where you stopped me from boarding the C-130. Did you accompany Lieutenant Mitchell’s Platoon instead of landing in Haditha with ‘B’ Company HQ?”

  Cassandra’s voice was soft, but insistent. “Tell her, Clyde. Perhaps she can help us.”

  Callaghan drew a deep breath and exhaled it with a shake of his head. “I didn’t go with Mitchell, not then.”

  The C-130 transports had fanned out across northern Iraq, dropping five platoons of Bravo Company at various points in the desert from which they would scour the area between Baghdad, Saddam’s tribal village of Tikrit and the Jordanian border. Mitchell’s Second platoon, landed south of Al Qaem, where the lieutenant organized twelve to fifteen trooper squads that he sent out in Humvees and Chinooks to the east and west of their position.

  Mitchell went west with his third squad in a couple of Hummers and weapons carrier along a primitive road toward Akashat, stopping occasional groups of travelers on foot, dromedaries, decrepit sand-blasted motorized conveyances, searching villages and towns along the way. The map showed a couple of tiny villages off the track to the west and several more to the east. Mitchell split the squad in two, sending seven troopers west with the squad leader and took nine soldiers east: Alvarez, Gerlach, Ogilvie, Palagi, Conté, Franks, their medic Ogilvie, and Bogosian among them.