with him, and yet . . . it seemed that he’d crossed the desert. On his own. On foot.”
Gracie’s eyes flared up with puzzlement. “But it’s, what, five, six hundred miles from here to the border, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Brother Ameen confirmed, his voice unnervingly calm.
“But he couldn’t have . . . not in these conditions.” Gracie was struggling for words. “There’s nothing but desert out there. The sun alone, his skin . . . Wasn’t he badly sunburned? How did he survive?”
The monk turned out his palms quizzically and looked at her with an expression that mirrored her confusion, but said nothing.
Gracie’s mind raced ahead, processing his story. It was possible, maybe—but there were too many unknowns to his story. “What does Father Jerome say happened? He didn’t say he walked here all the way from Sudan, did he?”
“He doesn’t remember what happened,” the monk explained. He raised a finger, his eyebrows rising as his words took on a more pointed tone. “But he believes he was meant to come here, to our monastery, to our cave. He believes it was his calling. Part of God’s plan.” The monk paused, then a hint of remorse crinkled his face. “I really shouldn’t be speaking on his behalf,” he added. “You can ask him yourself, when you meet him.”
Gracie snatched a glance at Finch. He tilted his head in a discreet gesture that mirrored her bewilderment.
“What about the documentary?” she asked. “Tell us about that.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How it came about? Were you there, did you meet these guys?”
Brother Ameen shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. They contacted us. They said they were making a documentary, that they’d heard about Father Jerome’s being up in the cave, and could they come over and film him. The abbot wasn’t keen, none of us were. It’s not in our nature, it’s not what we’re used to. But they were coming from a very respectable network, and they were very courteous, and they kept on asking and insisting. Eventually, we accepted.”
“Lucky you did,” Finch told him. “We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Brother Ameen replied, a hint of a smile in his eyes. “God works in mysterious ways. I imagine he would have found another way to bring you here, don’t you?”
Chapter 29
Cambridge,Massachusetts
Csaba hesitated, then, without turning his back to Matt, he took a few steps back to his desk. It was a mess of piles of magazines and printouts. Coffee cups teetered over them like cardboard watchtowers. Clearly, he and Bellinger were far from twins on more than just the physical front. A large Apple flat screen rose out of the morass and dominated it. It too showed the light over the ice shelf. Flicking his eyes from Matt to a wireless keyboard, Csaba tapped in a few keys and brought up another website. He turned to Matt with an expression that straddled sheepish and terrified.
Matt joined him at the desk. The news report he’d pulled up was a brief crime report. Bellinger’s body had been found in an alleyway not far from the bar. The report featured two black-and-white shots from a security camera inside the bar. One was a wide shot, showing Matt and Vince in mid-tussle. The other was a close-up of Matt’s face, taken from another frame.
He was pretty recognizable.
Matt’s eyes ate up the text voraciously. He didn’t see his name anywhere in it, although he knew that wouldn’t last. The article mentioned several witnesses, including an “unnamed woman” who claimed she was outside the bar when she saw Matt chase Bellinger furiously down the street. Which he hadn’t done. They’d grabbed them right outside the bar. Matt frowned, his mind flashing back to the woman in the van. He could picture her profile, backlit against the streetlights, the shoulder-length bob framing her face. One and the same, he was certain. He pictured the police showing up at his place, search warrant in hand. He also pictured them finding the murder weapon bob-girl and her buddies must have planted there.
He noticed Csaba scrutinizing him nervously.
“I know how this looks,” Matt told him, “but that’s not what happened. These guys came after Vince because of this thing in Antarctica.” He pointed angrily at the TV screen. “He thought my brother might have been murdered because of it. They killed Vince. I didn’t. You have to believe me.”
Which, reading Csaba’s jittery eyes, seemed like a tall order.
“You and Vince,” Matt asked. “You were talking about it, weren’t you? Before he bailed on you?”
Csaba nodded reluctantly.
It was all Matt had time for right now. “I need you to tell me what you guys said, but that can wait. They’re outside. We need to get out of here.”
“ ‘ We’ ? ” Csaba flinched, reaching for his phone. “Hey, I’m not going anywhere. You can do what you want. I’m calling the cops and—”
“We don’t have time for that,” Matt flared up fiercely as he grabbed the phone from him and slammed it back down close to its cradle. “They’re here. Now. Because of your little chat with Vince. Same deal. So if you want to live, you’re gonna have to trust me and come with me.” His gaze drilled into him, dead-committed.
Csaba hesitated, his eyes locked onto Matt’s, his breathing hard and fast—then he nodded.
“Do you have a car?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t matter. Come on.” Matt sprinted toward the door.
“Wait,” Csaba blurted, holding up one hand in a stalling gesture. He grabbed a backpack off the floor and started throwing things in it.
“We need to go,” Matt insisted.
“Just gimme a sec,” Csaba countered as he stuffed his Macbook laptop, charger, and iPhone into the backpack before flicking one last look around the room and joining Matt at the door.
Seeing the phone tripped something in Matt’s mind. “Your cell,” he told Csaba. “Switch it off.”
“Why?”
“They can track us with it. You must know that.”
Csaba’s mouth dropped an inch. Then the words clicked into place. “Yeah, right,” he said in a daze, and repeated “You’re right” as he fished out the phone and turned it off.
Matt glanced over at the screen for one last look—the blazing sign was still there, taunting him enigmatically—then he dashed out, with Csaba on his heels.
They took the elevator down to the garage. It was home to a dozen or so cars. Matt glanced around, not exactly spoiled for choice. Csaba’s neighbors seemed partial to Priuses and Japanese compacts, the Escalade owner notwithstanding. He settled on a marginally beefier Toyota RAV4, a car he was also pretty sure wouldn’t resist his charms.
He moved fast. He grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall and smashed the driver’s window with it, then reached in and flung the door open. “Get in,” he ordered Csaba as he swept the tiny glass flakes off the seat with his hand.
The big man just stood there, slack-jawed. “That’s Mrs. Jooris’s car,” he said ruefully. “She’s gonna be seriously pissed, dude. She worships that car.”
“It’s just a window. Get in.”
In the time it took Csaba to relent and cram himself into the passenger seat, Matt had popped the hood, yanked out the transponder fuse from the power relay center, and got the engine running. He climbed back in, threw the car in gear, and screeched up to the garage door. An unseen sensor had already instructed it to open. As it rose, the ramp appeared ahead, unobstructed, curving to the left and hugging the building.
