in Cairo — most likely both — but at the time it seemed like a vacation.
“Rome’s cool when you’re a kid,” he told Rankin in the cab. “I used to play hide-and-seek in the Forum ruins and chase cats in the Coliseum.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the Coliseum,” said Rankin. “And St. Peter’s.”
“St. Peter’s? The cathedral?”
“Why not?”
The taxi driver looked over his shoulder and told them that the cathedral would be closed for tours in an hour and, if he wanted to see it, he’d better go there first.
“All right, you go over to the church. I’ll meet you there when I’m done,” Ferguson told Rankin.
Rankin could never tell with Ferguson whether he had another agenda or not — usually he had three or four going at a time and would share only one and a half — but finally he decided Ferguson was just trying to be nice.
Uncharacteristically nice, as far as Rankin was concerned, but what the hell.
“Thanks,” he told Ferguson. “I appreciate it.”
“Any time, Skippy.”
Rankin felt his face burn red but kept his mouth shut.
Ferguson’s first order of business in the embassy’s secure communications center was to check in with the mission coordinator back home in what was affectionately known as “The Cube.” Nothing more than a high-tech communications center — albeit one located in a bugproof concrete bunker — The Cube was located beneath a nondescript building in a ho-hum industrial park in Virginia. Mission coordinators manned the Cube around the clock, providing Ferguson and other team members with whatever they needed. A small group of researchers and analysts were also housed at the facility, assigned to support current operations.
“Hey, Ferg,” said Jack Corrigan, the mission coordinator on duty. “Sorry about the plane.”
“Not a problem, Jack. Gave Rankin a chance to connect with his inner tourist.”
“Van wants you to check in with him.”
“He’s my next call.”
“How was Thera?”
“Crazy legs? She’s just fantastic.”
“Huh?”
“Long story, Jack. She’s fine. Looking forward to it. Promised to send postcards.”
“IAEA just told their staff.”
“Good for them. Can you get me Van?”
“On it.”
A few minutes later, Colonel Charles Van Buren’s voice snapped onto the line.
“Hey, Ferg,” said the colonel, speaking from Osan military base in South Korea. “Where are you?”
“On my way. What’s going on? You sound tired.”
“Playing basketball. Gettin’ my ass whooped.”
“We set?”
“Everything’s planned out. We have an unexpected bonus from the navy: amphibious warship we can use as an emergency base in the Yellow Sea.”
“Oh that’s discreet. No one will look for us there.”
“It’ll be two hundred and fifty miles offshore.”
“Long way to swim.”
“Only for an emergency, Ferg. Don’t worry.”
“All right. We’ll be out there soon. Keep your elbows to yourself.”
His phone calls done, Ferguson went over to one of the computers that could be used to access the Internet without being traced. He sat down at the machine, put his hands together, and then spread his fingers backward, cracking his knuckles on both hands the way his piano teacher had when he was six or seven. He smiled wryly, remembering the smells of stale cigarettes and staler sherry that had drifted from Mr. Cog when they sat down to practice. Ferg had had four years of lessons, on and off, and besides a mean “Chopsticks” and half a Beethoven sonata, the knuckle cracking was all he’d retained.
Ferguson called up Microsoft Internet Explorer and used it to find the main page of a small telephone company in Maine that offered highspeed Internet connections and e-mail boxes back in the States. From there he entered an account name and password and checked his personal e-mail. There was only one piece of correspondence in the file, and in fact he’d read it twice already, but it was what he had come to look at. The file popped open in the mail reader, narrow black letters on a ghost-white screen.
ferg: Well, you’ve always said play it straight, so here goes…
Ferguson scrolled through the numbers that followed, which had been taken from a medical test a week ago. The most important numbers measured the amount of radiation in his body following his ingestion of a rock-sized piece of iodine. They indicated that his thyroid cancer was spreading to areas well beyond the neck area, including his pancreas and liver.
This was the third time he’d looked at the e-mail, and he knew the numbers by heart now. It was the message in layman’s terms from the doctor that he wanted to read… or not.
As you can see, there are cells there that we don’t want. A lot of them. We’ve discussed the feasibility of further radiation treatments; obviously, that’s your decision. As I said, I can recommend some clinicians who are pursuing other avenues of inquiry. Let me know…
— Dr. Zeist
The conversation about radiation therapy — the only effective, tested treatment after removal of the thyroid — had taken place before the test. The doctor had repeated what Ferguson himself had already read in the medical papers regarding his thyroid cancer: In essence, further radiation treatments wouldn’t do any good.
“Other avenues of inquiry” were trial programs for untested therapies, aka wild shots in the dark, uncomfortable shots in the dark, most of them.
Ferguson folded his arms. His cancer had always seemed theoretical, even when they’d taken out his thyroid. His body was screwed up and out of whack, to be sure: He had to take synthetic thyroid hormones twice a day, or he turned into Mr. Hyde within twenty-four hours, the sharp corners of the world closing in around him and his head exploding. But he didn’t feel like he was going to
Thyroid cancer was supposed to be the easiest cancer to beat, like the flu, or measles. The little glowing dots on the doctors’ screens and the long reports of scan results didn’t match up with who he was. He wasn’t going to die, not from cancer for cryin’ out loud.
A part of him had always suspected that he was a prisoner of fate, that in the end he’d have no more power over his future than a housefly trapped in a spider’s web. But not
“Ah, screw this horseshit,” Ferguson said out loud.
He hit the button to delete the e-mail.
Rankin took another step to the side, admiring Michelangelo’s
Rankin was so absorbed in the statue that he didn’t hear Ferguson sneaking up behind him.
“I didn’t know you were such an art lover.”
Rankin just barely kept himself from jumping.
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Ferg.” He turned to leave.
“Hey, take your time. Plane’s not even at the airport yet.”
“I’m done,” said Rankin, walking away. “Let’s get something to eat.”
Ferguson looked up at the face of Mary, her agony crowded into elongated, blank eyes. Her lips were parted, as if she were about to say something, and yet the marble rendered her forever mute.
Once, on a visit with his dad when he was seven or eight, Ferguson thought he heard the statue whisper something to him about saying his prayers. Convinced, he did so for the next two weeks without fail, easily his
