Covenant Of The Flame Read online

  The seatbelt light was extinguished.

  From a microphone, a voice said, 'All passengers are free to move throughout the aircraft. In case of turbulence - of which you'll have ample warning - return to your seats and refasten your belts.'

  In an instant, the Secret Service agents, followed by the vice president's aides, exited hastily through the rear door to continue their duties.

  Gerrard leaned sideways. 'Tess, what I'm asking is, do you believe that the heretics are the people who want to kill you? Because of your friendship with one of them? Because they're afraid you've learned too much about them?'

  Tess fought to conceal her shock. She hadn't known what to expect when Gerrard brought Craig and her aboard Air Force Two. For certain, she'd never expected that Gerrard himself would raise the subject of the heretics. What the vice president had just told her about them - the extent of their conspiracy - was more than she already knew. Maybe she was wrong about him. Did it make sense for him to be so open, to reveal so much, if he was one of them?

  Or was he using candor to gain her confidence, to mute her suspicions?

  In a quandary, Tess decided that she couldn't pretend to be ignorant. She had to follow his lead. 'As near as I can figure, Alan, the answer is yes. But the truth is, although I stumbled across them, I hardly know anything about them.' She reached in her purse and showed him the photograph of the statue. 'This is the only evidence I have. I found the statue in my friend's bedroom, but later it was stolen. The reason I went to see Professor Harding was that I hoped he could tell me what it meant.'

  'And did he?'

  'His wife did. The man on the bull is a god named Mithras. The serpent, the dog, and the scorpion represent his evil counterpart. They're trying to stop the blood from reaching the ground, the wheat from growing, the bull from being fertile. That information - and the fact that the heretics survived a purge in the Middle Ages and then infiltrated various governments to stop the purge - is all I know.'

  Gerrard squinted. 'Then it's who you are, not what you know, that they believe threatens them. They're afraid you'll use your influence with your father's friends, including me, to expose them. The terrible irony is that their killings have been needless, that their desperate efforts are wasted since we already know a great deal more than you do about them. Your mother and Brian Hamilton didn't have to die. What a waste. I'm so sorry, Tess.'

  Tess's throat ached again from grief.

  At the same time, she retained' sufficient presence of mind to wonder why - if the inner circle of the government knew about the heretics - Eric Chatham had claimed to be ignorant about them?

  Surely the director of the FBI would have a major role in investigating them. Had Chatham been so suspicious of Father Baldwin's group that he'd decided to pretend he knew nothing about the heretics?

  As she considered the possibilities, uncertainty made her dizzy. What appeared to be sincerity might be deception, and apparent deception might very well be sincerity.

  Her consciousness felt clouded. Her sense of reality was threatened.

  Gerrard distracted her by clasping her hand. 'I promise you this. I'll use all my power to make them pay for what they did to your mother.'

  'Thank you, Alan. If only this nightmare would end.'

  'That's another promise. I'll do my best to see that it does end.'

  The cabin became still, except for the slight vibration caused by the engines.

  Gerrard glanced beyond Tess, his attention devoted to Craig. 'Lieutenant, my investigators tell me that you're fond of opera.'

  'True.' Craig frowned.

  'No need to be puzzled. My staff is thorough, as I explained.'

  'But what does opera have to do with.?'

  'If you'll reach in the seat pocket before you."

  Craig searched and found a set of earphones.

  'Put them on,' Gerrard said. 'Insert their extension into the console beside you. Turn the dial to channel five. You'll hear what is the greatest opera of all - Verdi's Otello.'

  'Verdi's good, but I've always preferred Puccini.'

  'I wasn't told that. I'm sorry - on this flight, all the operas we have are by Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner.'

  'Verdi will do just fine.' Craig coughed. 'The thing is, while I listen.?'

  Tess and I will take other seats. We haven't seen each other in too many years. We have memories to share, private matters to discuss.'

  Craig straightened nervously.

  'Executive privilege,' Gerrard said. 'Enjoy the opera. Tess?' He stood.

  'It's late.' She stood as well. 'Madrid's a long way. You'll be exhausted if you don't get some sleep, Alan. And I'm already exhausted. No offense. I'll want to lean against Craig's shoulder soon and doze off.'

  'I'll be waiting,' Craig said.

  'We won't be long,' Gerrard said. 'It's just a little story I want to tell her.'

  'I hope it's as fascinating as the opera,' Craig said.

  'More so,' Gerrard said.

  'Well, she can't ask for better than that.' Craig put on his earphones.

  Knowing the tension that Craig fought not to reveal, Tess allowed Gerrard to guide her toward one of many empty seats in the rear of the cabin.

  'And now?'

  'Actually I have two stories,' Gerrard said. 'One's about vinegar. The other's about frogs.'

  'Vinegar? Frogs? You're confusing me, Alan.'

  'You'll understand when I finish.'

  SIX

  'To begin,' Gerrard said as they buckled their seatbelts, 'I'm told that since I last saw you, since you graduated from college, you've become an environmentalist, not just in your attitudes but as your profession. You're a staff writer for Earth Mother Magazine.'

  'That's right,' Tess said.

  'I confess I haven't read the magazine, but my investigators searched through several back issues. They tell me your articles are very informative, the writing quite accomplished. They particularly mentioned how impressed they were with an essay you'd written on the alarmingly rapid disappearance of wetlands and the rare species that inhabit them. What struck my investigators was that it wasn't a topic they would have expected to find interesting, but you made it so and indeed convinced them of how important those wetlands were. The photographs that accompanied the article - taken by you - were exceptional, they said, and made them realize how beautiful the rare insects, birds, and fish that inhabit those wetlands are, what a loss to the planet they'd be. To the world's ecology.'

  'Thank them for the compliment;' Tess said. 'Now if they'd just follow through and donate to organizations devoted to preserving those wetlands.'

  'As a matter of fact, they did.'

  Tess felt gratified. 'Please, thank them twice.'

  'I will. Now here's the point. Even though I haven't read Mother Earth Magazine, I'm an environmentalist as well. You may have read about the controversy I caused when I voted against the president to break the tie on the Senate's rigid clean-air bill.'

  'I did,' Tess said, 'and I have to say I was impressed. You did the right thing.'

  'The president has a different opinion. You wouldn't want to have been in the Oval Office when he chewed me out for being disloyal. What he doesn't know is that in matters about the environment I'll continue to be disloyal, even if it means he chooses someone else as a running mate in the next election. There comes a time when you have to take a stand, no matter the personal cost.'

  Tess felt her suspicions dwindling. Despite her fear, Gerrard had begun to win her respect. 'He'd be making a mistake if he dumped you.'

  'Write him a letter. Tell him so.' Gerrard chuckled. A few moments later, he sobered. 'Because you're an expert in these matters, maybe you know this story, but I'll tell it to you anyhow.'

  He was interrupted. A voice asked, 'Sir, would you care for a drink?'

  Gerrard glanced up. A flight attendant stood beside him. 'The usual. Orange juice.'

  'Sounds good to me,' Tess said.

  As the flight attendant d
eparted, Gerrard said, There's a man I beard about who lives in Iowa. A farmer. His name's Ben Gould. He's a member of the National Audubon Society. He's also an amateur climatologist. Near his barn, he's got a shed with a rain-gauge, barometer, wind indicator, and various other weather-analysis instruments. Two summers ago, after an extended period of drought that just about killed his corn and soybeans, his farm was blessed with several days of heavy rain. Or at least Gould thought his farm had been blessed. He put on rubber boots and slogged through mud to his weather shack. His rain gauge was almost full. He poured its contents into a sterile container, carried the container into his shack, and dumped the liquid into an instrument that analyses the chemical contents of water. This instrument was computerized. Red numbers glowed on a console. Two point five.'

  The flight attendant handed Tess and Gerrard glasses of orange juice along with napkins.

  They nodded their thanks.

  'Two point five,' Gerrard repeated. 'What those numbers represented was the pH of the rain, the level of acid. The rule is, the lower the number, the higher the acid. Pure rainwater registers at five point three. But two point five! Gould was shocked. He told himself that there had to be a mistake, so he doublechecked his readings, using rain from another gauge. But the instrument's console showed the same numbers. Two point five. That's the acidic level of vinegar. Gould suddenly realized why his crops looked stunted. Vinegar? That's what you put on a salad. Not on your crops. It could rain every week, and Gould's crops would still look stunted. In a panic, he examined his wind charts. Global warming and its erratic effects had caused the jet stream to veer unusually southward. Into New Mexico. Then across Iowa. New Mexico's copper smelters are notorious for spewing outrageous amounts of sulphur fumes into the atmosphere. Those sulphur fumes, as you know, produce acid rain. And acid rain, in never before such intense concentration, was poisoning Gould's land.'

  Pausing, Gerrard sipped his orange juice. 'Anyway, that's my story about vinegar. I wish I could say it had a climax, a happy ending, but the fact is, Gould's crops are still being poisoned, and there won't be a happy ending until we have legislation that forces those copper smelters and other heavy industries to clean up their act. Not just legislation in America, but worldwide. In Germany and Czechoslovakia, for example, there are thousands of square kilometers of woodland that have been totally destroyed and blackened by acid rain.'

  Tess nodded. 'I know about those sections of Germany and Czechoslovakia, but your story about Iowa is new to me.'

  'Then write an article on it. Maybe it'll do some good, get people thinking, motivated enough to write to their congressional representative, demanding controls.'

  'I will,' Tess said. 'Poisoned forests don't seem to bother people unless they see the devastation. But a personal story, like Gould's, might make the crisis vivid.'

  'And while you're at it, write the other story I'm about to tell you, the one about the frogs.' Gerrard drained his glass of orange juice and set it down. The main character in this one is a biologist named Ralph McQueen. His specialty is amphibians, and each year he likes to make a field trip into the Sierra Nevadas. A decade ago, he checked thirty-eight lakes and found them teeming with yellow-legged frogs. Last summer when he went back, he couldn't believe what he found or rather didn't find. The frogs had vanished from all but one of those lakes. In shock, he tried to discover why they'd vanished. His best guess was that some kind of deadly virus had wiped out almost the entire local population. But when he went to a herpetology convention in Brussels last fall, his shock became greater. It turns out that the Sierra Nevadas aren't the only area where frogs are disappearing. From colleagues, he learned that the same thing was happening all over the United States and indeed all over the world - in Costa Rica, Japan, Europe, Australia, Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, South America, everywhere. The frogs are dying, and no one's quite sure why. Acid rain, pesticides, water pollution, air pollution, global warming, too many ultraviolet rays caused by the hole in the ozone layer. Maybe all of those. It's hard to say. But the interesting thing about frogs is that they don't have scales to protect them, and they breathe through their skin, which is very sensitive. That makes them extremely vulnerable to damaging changes in the environment. It used to be that coal miners took a caged canary into the shaft they were working on. If odorless poisonous gases built up, they'd know because the canary, so small, would die first. The miners would have a chance to run from the shaft.'

  Gerrard furrowed his brow. 'Possibly the frogs are canaries for the planet. Their massive extinction might be a warning that something's very wrong. What's more, their extinction could have disastrous effects on the world's ecology. The frogs eat huge amounts of insects. Without them, flies and mosquitoes - to name just a few - will breed out of control. At the same time, larger life forms such as birds and animals depend on the frogs for food. Without the frogs, those other life forms will die.

  'Frogs.' Gerrard shook his head. 'So seemingly trivial. So formerly common. So much a part of nature that we hardly noticed them. I suppose a lot of people could care less if they're dying, but what those people don't realize is that the frogs are an environmental cornerstone, and without them.' Gerrard's voice dropped, his tone despondent. 'Write it, Tess. An epitaph for the frogs, for the songs they no longer sing. A warning to everyone who still hasn't realized how endangered the world has become.'

  'I will. I promise.'

  Gerrard clasped her hand once more. 'I told you those stories not just because we share the same concerns or because the stories relate to your work. I had another motive, one that involves the heretics.'

  Startled by the mention of the word, Tess came to greater attention.

  'What I didn't indicate earlier,' Gerrard said, 'is that as much as we can determine, the heretics' conspiracy to terrorize corporations and infiltrate governments, to assassinate politicians and replace them with the heretics' own representatives, to blackmail other politicians in order to control their votes on environmental legislation, is due to the heretics' fear about the safety of the world. The photograph you showed me symbolizes their motive.' Gerrard gestured as if tracing an invisible image. 'A good god trying to fertilize the earth. An evil god trying to stop it. The heretics believe that the evil god has assumed control and is using every effort to destroy the planet.' Again Gerrard frowned. 'I'm sure you can understand the heretics' point of view. The evidence of the planet's destruction is all around us. Their intentions are the same as yours and mine, although their methods, of course, are repugnant. But a part of me, I confess, sympathizes. If a person gets frightened enough, if legitimate methods don't work, sometimes desperate measures are required. I don't approve, but I do identify with their desperation, the same desperation that forced me to vote against the president and for the Senate's clean-air bill. What I'm getting at is that good and evil aren't always as easily distinguishable as they might seem. If the heretics manage to save the planet, perhaps in the long run their methods are justified. I really don't know. I'm a politician, not an expert in ethics. But I'll tell you this. There are times when I hesitate, when I question how much force we should use to hunt them. If my children live to have grandchildren and those grandchildren breathe clean air, drink pure water, eat uncontaminated food, and flourish, maybe the heretics will have been right. I just don't know.'

  He studied Tess, waiting for her reaction.

  Tess took a while to answer, mustering, organizing her thoughts. 'I understand what you mean, Alan. Like you, a part of me identifies with the heretics or at least with their motives. Irresponsible corporations ought to be made accountable. Indifferent politicians ought to be removed from government. There's a global crisis, and it has to be faced, to be dealt with and solved. But murder, Alan? Extortion? Lives ruined? Families in grief? I've never supported capital punishment, although I did feel the urge to strangle the captain of the Pacific-Rim oil tanker who allowed his alcoholism to impair his judgement and capsize his tanker so its cargo polluted the Great
Barrier Reef. But I've never met that captain. I don't know him. I don't know his virtues and his strengths, so it's easy enough for me to hate him from a distance. This much I do know. My friend who was burned in New York - he didn't agree with extortion and murder. And Brian Hamilton never did anything to endanger the environment. And my mother, God bless her soul, was just a simple-minded, heartsick, pampered, pathetic socialite who never did anything to harm anyone. In spite of her failings, I loved her. Deeply. When the heretics murdered her - I can still see the blood flying out of her back - just so they could try to get at me, when they did that, they made this very personal. Capital punishment? No, I don't believe in it. But revenge, Alan? After what I've been through, after the horror of the past few days, I'd like nothing better than to hunt them down and pay them back. Didn't you promise me that earlier? To help me pay them back?'

  Gerrard nodded.

  'So what it comes down to, Alan, is that I don't care if the heretics share my commitment to save the world. They're bastards. They're evil - in fact more evil than the evil god they believe they're fighting. They're twisted sons of bitches, and I'll do everything I can to put them in hell, which is where they belong and less than what they deserve. Maybe this planet isn't worth protecting if good gets confused with murder, and my mother dies because of that.'