site at the Albuquerque Seismological Lab, the Caracas quake was immediately classified as a Major Seismic Event, and, per protocol, hot-line calls went out to Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House.
In the C Ring of the Pentagon, deep within its inner core, the Secretary of the Navy got the news from a minor aide to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Lester listened, grunted an acknowledgment, and hung up. He’d been consumed with the planning for this day for two years, and this was not the way it was supposed to go down.
The Mission Plan stipulated that at the moment the Caracas Event occurred, Lester would descend to a command bunker in a Pentagon subbasement and authorize the US Southern Command to signal the Fourth Fleet. The fleet would be positioned north of Aruba, engaged in a mock joint exercise with the British Royal Navy. They would be ordered to proceed to Venezuela as the spearhead of Operation Helping Hand. Key Venezuelan opposition leaders and senior dissident army officers would be standing by with their families in Valencia, out of harm’s way. They’d be choppered into the capital city and under the protection of a US Marine expeditionary force, the government would be tilting toward Washington within twenty-four hours.
None of that happened.
Will Piper single-handedly blew up Operation Helping Hand.
After the Post story broke, the Vice President urgently convened a Task Force meeting and shut Helping Hand down: no adjustments, no modifications, just ash-canned. There was zero dissent. Anyone with a brain in their head would connect the dots between Area 51 and a military operation that looked in retrospect like it was preplanned to coincide with the disaster.
The humanitarian supplies would be airlifted, and the prompt US response would be cordially received by the shell-shocked Venezuelan president, who vowed to rebuild Caracas and continue the country on its socialist path.
Two years of work, down the drain.
Lester sighed, checked his day planner, and told his secretary he was going out. His afternoon was wide open, and he decided he’d head over to his club and pick up a game of squash.
Epilogue
Six months later
Isle of Wight
It was a sparkling, fresh spring afternoon, the sun impossibly yellow, the newly mown grass impossibly green. Across the meadows, the seagulls were soaring over the Solent, urgently calling to one another.
The redbrick tower of the abbey church rising into the clean blue sky gave the tourists an irresistible snapshot opportunity. Although Vectis Abbey had always been open to the public, the revelations about its ancient Library had turned it into a substantial point of interest, much to the consternation of the resident monks. On weekends, local women from the village of Fishbourne volunteered to conduct guided tours, mostly to encourage visitors into bunches as this was less disruptive to the routine of monastery life than having people aimlessly wandering through the church and the abbey grounds.
The baby in the stroller began to cry. The tourists, mostly seniors well past their infant-loving years, looked annoyed, but his parents were unfazed.
His mother checked his diaper. “I’m going to find a place to change him,” Nancy said, peeling off toward the tea-house.
Will nodded and kept listening to the guide, a heavily haunched middle-aged woman who was pointing at tender shoots sprouting up from behind a rabbit fence and expounding on the importance of vegetables to a fraternal order.
He’d been looking forward to the vacation to escape the hectic world he’d created for himself. There were still interviews to give, books to write, all the unwanted trappings of celebrity. Even now, paparazzi hung around 23 ^rd Street. And he had newly found obligations. Alf Kenyon, who had largely recovered from his knee wound, was going to be going on a tour in a few months to promote his book on John Calvin, Nostradamus, and the Cantwell papers. Kenyon asked him to do some media with him, and he couldn’t say no. And Dane Bentley had a bachelor party and a wedding coming up, although Will still wasn’t sure which of his girlfriends he was marrying.
For the moment, Will was able to put the swirl of recent months out of his mind and concentrate on the here and now. He was fascinated with everything about their island visit-the chilly, wind-strafed car-ferry crossing from the mainland, the pub lunch in Fishbourne, where he wavered at the bar before ordering a Coke, the first glimpse of the monastery from the footpath, the sight of the robed monks, who, despite their habits and sandals, looked like ordinary men-until they filed into the church precisely at 2:20 for the None service. Inside the sanctuary, the monks were transformed into different sorts, all together. Their concentration at prayer and song, their intensity of purpose, the seriousness of their spiritual pleasure set them apart from the visitors, who sat at the rear of the vaulted church, curious observers, awkwardly voyeuristic.
The monks were now at afternoon work, some tending the garden and the chicken coops, others indoors in the kitchen, the pottery, or bookbinder’s shop. There weren’t many of them, fewer than a dozen, mostly older men. The young infrequently sought the monk’s life these days. The tour was winding down, and Will hadn’t yet seen what he came for. His hand shot up along with the hands of others. They all wanted the same thing, and the guide knew what was coming.
She called on him because he stood out from the crowd, tall and handsome, his eyes shining with intelligence. “I’d like to see the medieval monastery.”
The group murmured. That’s what everyone wanted.
“Yes, funny you should ask!” she joked. “I was going to point you in the right direction. It’s less than a quarter mile up that lane. Everyone wants to go there lately, not that there’s much to see. Just some ruins. But seriously, ladies and gentlemen, I understand the interest, and I encourage you to visit the site for some quiet contemplation. The spot has been marked with a small plaque.”
As the guide was answering questions, she kept staring at Will, and when she was done, she approached him and unself-consciously inspected his face.
“Thanks for the tour,” he told her.
“May I ask you something?”
He nodded.
“By any chance, are you Mr. Piper, the American who’s been in the news over all this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She beamed. “I thought so! Would you mind if I told the abbot you’re here. I think he’ll want to meet you.”
Dom Trevor Hutchins, the Lord Abbot of Vectis Abbey was a portly, white-haired man brimming with enthusiasm. He led Will and Nancy up the gravel lane toward the crumbling medieval walls of the ancient monastery and asked to push the stroller to “give the young man a ride.”
He insisted on repeating the history that Will and Nancy had just heard about the medieval abbey being shuttered and looted by King Henry’s Reformation in 1536, the masonry dismantled stone by stone and shipped to Cowes and Yarmouth for castle-building and fortification. All that now remained were the ragged ghosts of the grand complex, low walls and foundations.
The modern abbey was built in the early twentieth century by French monks who used red bricks to revive the Benedictine tradition, choosing to build near the hallowed ground of the old abbey. The abbot himself was approaching his twenty-fifth year at Vectis, having joined as a young man fresh from a classics degree at Cambridge.
Around a bend, the rough, tumbledown walls came into view. The ruins were in a field overlooking the Solent, the south coast of England looming across the narrow stretch of sea. The pebbled walls that had survived the centuries were clipped-off facades with a few remaining cutouts where windows and arches had been. Sheep were
