it to the War Room, where he checked his incoming e-mail and faxes. There was nothing to be seen, both machines glaring at him like two angry dark eyes. What the hell is wrong? He turned and walked back out to the main part of the house and opened the front door. The velvety night was dark and quiet. He walked over to the bench under a tall pine and sat down. The pungent scent of pine was so strong, he felt light-headed. Sipping his coffee, he lit up one of the cigarettes he thought no one knew about. He puffed furiously, hoping the cigarette would calm his twanging nerve endings.
Lowering his head as he tried to grapple with what he was experiencing, Charles let his gaze drop to the watch on his wrist. He could read the numerals clearly in the eerie blue light of the halogen lamp in the center of the compound: 3:45. He raised his head to look around. He’d never felt as lonely as he felt just then, that very second, in the whole of his life. He wondered suddenly if he was going to die. He shivered. For some reason, he’d never given his own death a thought until then. He immediately discarded the image. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to grapple with his feelings and his morbid thoughts.
Desperate, Charles fired up a second cigarette. After the first two puffs on his previous cigarette, he’d let it turn to ash. He inhaled deeply and coughed. Terrible, ugly, nasty habit, but he could understand why people smoked. Suddenly, he felt calm. The hand holding the cigarette was rock steady. His head felt clear, his senses sharp. This is it, he told himself. Either I’m going to die, or something is going to happen, right now.
The special encrypted phone he was never without vibrated. In that single instant Charles knew he wasn’t going to die. He was sharply aware of the night around him, the rustling of the pines, the cough of a frog somewhere deep in the forest. For one second he thought he could actually hear the clouds move overhead. His uncanny sixth sense told him there was a possum or a raccoon within spitting distance. The sudden glow of two yellow eyes confirmed his feeling. A maple tree to the left of him rustled impatiently in the early-morning breeze. Off to the right, he could hear the creak of the cable car in its nest in the housing unit as the morning breeze kicked over into a light wind. Except for those rare times when he slept so deeply a building could have fallen on him and he wouldn’t have woken, he had always been a poor sleeper, waking just the way he’d woken a little while ago. It had taken him a long time to get used to the mysterious moans and groans of the stationary cable car as well as to all the other mountain noises.
Dreading what he was going to hear on the special phone but needing desperately to know who was on the other end, he flipped it open and brought it to his ear. He rather thought he said hello, but later on he simply couldn’t remember. What he did remember was the brisk voice that said, “Sir Malcolm,” by way of greeting.
It was already midmorning across the pond. For his special friend to call him at that hour had to mean something very serious was wrong somewhere, and somehow it affected either him or the Sisters. Somehow Charles managed to find his voice.
“Tell me straight off, Bess.” He took a second to wonder why he was calling his friend “Bess.” Normally he called her “Liz.” Bess was reserved for times of crisis. “Don’t blather on, I can take it, whatever it is.” Charles’s long years of friendship allowed him to speak with such familiarity to the most powerful person in all of England.
“Very well. But, please, sit down, Sir Malcolm.”
“Bloody hell, Bess, would you still tell me to sit down if I was in bed? Even the squirrels and birds aren’t awake yet. I woke about an hour ago, knowing something was wrong.” Then Charles’s voice changed, it grew softer, almost pleading when he said, “Just tell me, and I’ll deal with it.”
Charles listened, the color draining from his face. Now, he thought, I really am going to die. I really am. The voice nudged him for a response twice before he could make his tongue work. “I heard it all. Thank you for calling me. Yes. Yes, I will be ready.” The special phone went back into his pocket.
In a daze, Charles walked back to the main house on leaden feet to his bedroom, where he packed a bag in the dark. He looked down at Myra, who was still sleeping soundly. He wanted to touch her, wake her, to tell her…so many things. Things he didn’t understand. Instead, he left the room as quietly as he’d entered it.
Across the compound, Annie, on one of her nocturnal trips around the house she lived in, saw the lights go on in the main house. It wasn’t all that unusual to see the main house lit up in the wee hours of the morning. Charles was a notorious nonsleeper, often working through the night, especially if they were on a mission. He was a master at those ten-minute power naps the media touted. But something prickled at the back of her neck, right between her shoulder blades. She always referred to the feeling as her own personal warning system. She didn’t stop to think as she put on a robe and slippers and quietly left the house. She walked across the compound and up the steps to the main house.
Quietly opening the door, Annie walked out to the kitchen, where Charles was sitting on a kitchen stool, staring into space. To her mind’s eye, he looked terrible. She poured coffee and sat down on the opposite stool. That was when she saw the bulging duffel bag.
Annie’s stomach muscles crunched into a knot. She didn’t bother beating around the bush. “Where are you going, Charles? It’s not even light out yet. Were you going to leave us a note or just…disappear? Does Myra know you’re leaving? Of course she doesn’t, or she’d be here in the kitchen with us. You need to say something, Charles, and you need to say it now.”
“I…I have to go away, Annie. I’m not sure when I’ll be back or even if I will be back. I had some…Well, let’s just say I had some disturbing news that I have to act upon immediately, and there was no time…What I mean is…”
“You’re sitting here right now. I am sitting here right now. That means to me that you had time to wake Myra, wake all of us, to tell us whatever the hell is going on with you. What does that mean, you don’t know if you will come back? Exactly and precisely, what does that mean? What are you waiting for? Ah, a helicopter, right? Are you going to tell me or not?”
Charles looked down at his watch. He had eleven minutes until the British helicopter set down on the mountain. “Fetch the others, Annie, but be quick. I just have eleven minutes.”
Annie ran. She rang the bell on the front porch of the cabin she lived in with the girls. She shouted to them to meet her in the kitchen of the big house, then ran, stumbling to Myra’s room, where she literally pulled her from the bed.
“Get up and dress, quick, Myra. Charles is packed and ready to leave. A helicopter is coming, and he said he might never come back. Get with it, Myra, stop staring at me like a lunatic. Dress! That’s a goddamn order. Don’t forget your pearls,” she added as an afterthought as she raced out of the room. That was a stupid thing to say; Myra was never dressed until the pearls were around her neck.
Annie arrived back at the kitchen just as the others stumbled across the dining room in various modes of dress. Myra was the last one in, sloppily dressed in a sweat suit. She was trying to smooth down her hair as she looked around in a daze. Then both hands flew to the pearls around her neck.
“Eight minutes and counting,” Annie said breathlessly. “Go for it, Charles. The highlights, since time is short. We can fill in the blanks ourselves.”
“What’s going on?” Myra demanded, an edge to her voice as she eyed the bulging duffel bag at Charles’s feet. Her hands feathered the pearls at her neck, a sure sign that she was agitated.
“I had a disturbing phone call from…from a friend across the pond a little while ago. It seems my son was in a plane crash and is in extreme danger.”
“Son!
