“Let me finish my story. It won’t take long. He gave me the butterfly and after dinner we were in the kitchen, doing the dishes together like we always did, talking about our upcoming trip to Capri and how much we loved that island. That’s when the telephone rang in his study. He went in there to take the call. I heard him say hello but heard nothing after that. I got curious and went to check on him. He was just standing there, with the phone to his ear. When he saw me, he hung up and said he was going to walk the dog and for me to go on up to bed. I knew something was wrong. It was in his eyes. The way he spoke. The way he moved. I asked if he was all right and he said, oh, fine, you know. But he wasn’t. I asked him who it was on the phone. He said nobody. Just music. Really beautiful music. Heavenly, he called it. Transcendent, lovelier than Pachelbel’s Canon. And then he went and got his coat from the closet, put Feynman on his leash, and walked out the front door. And he never-he never came back, Brick. He never came back to me.”
He let her weep, putting his arm around her shivering shoulders and pulling her close to him.
Sobbing, she said, “Do you believe me, Brick? Am I just a crazy old woman?”
“I do believe you, Stella. I believe every word you’ve just said. And I will find whoever did this to your husband, I swear to you. No matter what it takes, I’ll find them and try to bring you some peace. It’s the least this country can do after all Waldo did for us.”
Stella withdrew her hand from her pocket once more and held it out, her empty palm up. The golden butterfly appeared, darting down from somewhere in the high branches above and alighted upon her outstretched hand. It settled, folded its wings, and she carefully put it back inside her pocket. She withdrew her hand once more and placed a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.
“What’s this?” Kelly asked.
“Just after I found Waldo’s body, I ran to the lab to call for an ambulance. I found a name he’d scribbled on a notepad by the phone. He noted the time, you’ll see. He wrote 7:47 P.M., just before he came up to dinner. And that equation below has to do with the impossibility of surpassing the speed of light, by the way.”
“Thank you, Stella. It’s a good start.”
“Thank you, Brick,” she said, getting slowly to her feet. “I knew the instant I saw you standing by the grave that they’d sent me the right one.”
She turned and walked away down the hill, a black smudge of watercolor that eventually seeped into the grey mist and disappeared.
He opened the paper. On it a single scrawled word in Cohen’s hand: Darius. And beneath it an equation. Something to do with the speed of light. Brick got to his feet, stretching his long limbs. He knew what he had to do. First things first.
He needed to assemble his team.
Call C at MI6 in London. Get Alex Hawke on this.
At least he now had a name.
Darius.
Twenty-three
U.S. Missile Defense Agency Launch Site, Fort Greely, Alaska
Rain was still falling on the corrugated tin roof of the Red Onion saloon. Lightning flashed on and off, and thunder shook the wooden walls. The streets outside were rivers of mud lit by sulfurous yellow arc lights. The Onion was the only place where a man could get a drink in downtown Camp Greely, population 328, including military personnel, their families, and civilians. Whoever coined the phrase “middle of nowhere” coined it right here in Greely. Try to find it on Google Earth. Seriously. Good luck.
Since he was “going underground” at 0600 tomorrow for a forty-eight-hour tour, Lieutenant Colt Portis was in the mood to drink. Portis was a “push-button warrior.” He had command of a group of U.S. Army personnel whose responsibility it was to defend America from an attack by hostile nations. Specifically, an attack utilizing intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from North Korea, Russia, or China.
The good-looking young army lieutenant pushed his empty beer glass across the battered bar and said to the barkeep, “Only if you’re not too busy, Griz.”
“Never too busy for you, General,” the bearded codger in the filthy white apron told the good-looking young army lieutenant. He snatched up his sudsy glass and pulled another pint. Portis turned to his right and spoke to his watch partner and fellow “Guardian of the North,” namely, anyone manning the ABM, or antiballistic missile, base here at Greely.
“Ready to beat feet, Speed?” he asked his friend.
“What?”
“Vamoose. Amscray. Leave?”
“Hold your horses, okay?”
Art Midge, who hailed from Lower Bottom, Kentucky, had only two gears: slow and slower, thus his base nickname “Speed.” The night they’d met, in this very saloon, Speed had said to him, “Know where Lower Bottom, Kentucky, is?”
“Nope,” Colt had said.
“You don’t?”
“Hell, no.”
“Why, damn, Portis, you ought to. Everybody else does. It’s in a little holler just down the mountain from Upper Bottom.”
“Makes sense,” Colt said, trying not to laugh just in case Speed was being serious.
The rangy youngster was currently busy leaning over the bar, peering deeply into the half-empty bottle of tequila sitting in front of him, as if it held countless untold secrets. Judging by the level of concentration, Portis was half expecting a question on the true meaning of life.
“Why in hell do you s’pose they put a worm inside some brands of tequila anyway? What’s your thought on that?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Well, now I’m asking.”
“Called a gusano down in Mexico, where they eat them all the time. Says it makes your dick hard.”
“Yeah? I wouldn’t eat a worm even if it made my dick bigger.”
“If I were you I’d eat up then, little buddy.”
“You ain’t me.”
“I got lucky, what can I tell you?”
Portis downed a final shot of tequila and chased it with his last gulp of Moose Drool Brown Ale, a local microbrew. He slid off the stool and punched Speed’s bulging shoulder muscle.
“Last call for alcohol, little buddy of mine. Drink up.”
“You’re leaving? What the hell, Colt? See that little white T-shirt full of balloons over there in the corner?”
“Yeah. Hard to miss.”
“Girl has her eye on you, stud muffin.”
Portis glanced over his shoulder and winked at the girl. Nothing wrong with winking last time he checked. Maybe he was married with a brand-new set of twins, but, goddarn it, he wasn’t dead yet.
“Margie’s already wondering where I am. She’s got supper on the table ’bout now. I’m outta here, Speed. I’ll see you in the A.M. before we go down in the hole, all right?”
“Two whole days without liquor, sunlight, or women. Damn.”
“It’s an honor to serve, Speed. Don’t ever forget that.”
Midge saw the look on Portis’s face and decided to keep his wisecrack to himself. Colt was a smart guy, Stanford grad, then Caltech before he signed up. Always reading books about the military and American history and shit. The kind of guy who gave the word patriot a good name: an All-American American.
“Give my little Margie a hug for me, buddy, I’ll catch you on the flip side.”
“Later, man.”
