The Sign

The volume was too low for him to hear what was being said, but even before the waitress turned it up, the visuals themselves were deafening enough. A loud banner on the bottom of the screen informed them that Father Jerome hadn’t been seen since the sign had appeared over him earlier that day. Another added that unconfirmed reports had said that he had actually left the monastery for destinations unknown. Reporters and pundits around the world were scrambling to figure out where he was and where he could have gone to. They wondered about whether he might be headed to Jerusalem, or the Vatican, or back home to Spain.

Elsewhere, gargantuan crowds were still massed in St. Peter’s Square, in Sao Paulo, and in many more cities now, holding vigils and praying. The world was holding its breath, waiting for Father Jerome’s next appearance. Pockets of violence had cropped up in Pakistan, in Israel, and in Egypt, where men and women of all religions who had taken to the streets to proclaim their faith in Father Jerome had clashed with mobs of unswayed and unwavering believers who were sticking to the rigid tenets of their holy books. Riot police had been deployed, cars and shops had been set alight, and in each case, there had been deaths.

Matt stared at the screen for a moment, then finally said, “Wherever that priest’s going, that’s where we’ll find Danny.”

“You want to go to Egypt?”

Matt shrugged. “If he’s still there, hell yeah.”

Jabba’s shoulders sagged. He took one last bite and pushed his plate off to the side of the table. Wiped his mouth and cast a glance across the diner, then turned his attention back to Matt. Their fates were now intertwined, there was no escaping that. And though he hardly knew the man, he’d seen enough of him to recognize that look—a distant, frowning look that indicated something was bothering him, some kind of itch he needed to scratch. Jabba studied him for a beat, then prompted him by asking, “What is it, dude?”

Matt nodded his head a fraction, to himself, wheels visibly spinning in his mind. After a moment, he said, “We need Rydell. They screwed him over. They’ve got his daughter. Right now, he’s real angry. Which makes me think he could help us get Danny back.”

“Not as long as they’ve got his daughter,” Jabba reminded him.

“Maybe we can change that.”

“Dude, come on,” Jabba protested.

“She’s got herself caught up in this thing just like we have,” Matt argued. “Through no fault of her own. You think this is going to end well for her? You think her dad’s gonna kiss and make up with these guys? They’re hanging onto her to get him to play nice. Once they’re done, they’re not going to let them live.”

Jabba gave him a look.

Matt just batted it back. “You like the idea of Maddox and his storm-troopers keeping her locked up somewhere?”

Jabba smiled despite himself and said, “Look, just because you throw in a Star Wars reference doesn’t mean—”

“Seriously,” Matt interrupted. “We need to do this. Besides, maybe that’s where they’ve been keeping Danny too.”

Jabba tilted his head at him, dubiously. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“Not really,” Matt conceded. Then he gave Jabba a slight grin. “What, you got something better to do?”

Jabba shook his head in defeat. “Even if I did, this is bound to be so much more fun.”

JUST OVER THREE HOURS LATER, Maddox took the second call that night from his contact at the NSA.

“I just got another hit,” the man from Fort Meade told the Bullet. “Very brief. Under twenty seconds.”

“They know we’re trying to track them.”

“For sure. They’re being very careful. But not careful enough.”

“Location?”

“Same place,” the caller told him. The GPS lock had placed Jabba’s iPhone on a busy little commercial strip leading out of Framingham.

“Okay. Keep me posted. In real time. We’re in progress.”

Maddox hung up and hit a speed-dial key. The man on the other end picked up the line before it had completed its first ring.

“How far are you?” he asked.

“Should be there in less than ten,” the operative replied.

“Okay,” Maddox said. “We just got another lock. Same location. They’re probably in a hotel or a motel on that block. Let me know what you find.”

Chapter 61

Boston, Massachusetts

The presidential suite on the sixth floor of the Four Seasons was as comfortable as it got in the city, or pretty much anywhere else in the world, but as far as Rydell was concerned, he could just as easily have been sitting in a cramped motel room with a coin-operated vibrating bed that didn’t work. His mind wasn’t registering his surroundings right now. It was elsewhere, stranded on a totally different plane. Grappling with a new reality.

He’d returned to his house after getting away from Matt. It had been swarming with cops and armed response guys—and Maddox. He’d managed Rydell into giving the cops a bullshit story about an attempted kidnapping. Rydell had told them he didn’t know who was behind it, saying the men had worn balaclavas. He told them he’d managed to escape from his captors when they’d tried to transfer him from the garbage truck to another car and hadn’t operated the compactor properly. He’d left it at that and, wanting to avoid the inevitable paparazzi onslaught, had checked into the Four Seasons. His lawyers could deal with the rest.

Maddox had arranged to have two of his men stationed outside the suite. That angered Rydell, but there was nothing he could do about it. Not as long as they had his daughter. And ever since, he’d been busy reliving his meeting with Drucker, Matt’s intrusion, and grinding over what the two men had said.

If they haven’t killed you yet, it means they also need you for something, Matt had told him. Which rang true. Worryingly true. But what did they need him for? When Rydell had threatened Drucker and told him they couldn’t do it without him, Drucker had agreed. But that wasn’t true. Not really. Rydell had left there believing his own bluff. With a rising dread, he now realized that actually, they could. And were. They had the technology. They knew where the smart dust was being manufactured and stockpiled. They could easily secure the facility. They had Danny.

They didn’t need him to make it happen. Not anymore.

And yet they hadn’t gotten Maddox to pump a couple of bullets into him.

The realization pulled his doubts regarding what Drucker had in mind back into focus. They’d gone into this together, brothers-in-arms, united for a worthy cause. Was that still the case? It suddenly dawned on him that maybe they weren’t after the same thing anymore. Maybe the others were after something else. And in the process, they’d created a messenger that transcended the message. That dwarfed it and buried it in its shadow. The media’s shifting focus confirmed his fears.

The story wasn’t about God’s warning anymore. It was about His messenger.

Drucker wouldn’t make such a mistake. Unless he had a different message in mind.