Douglas Preston - Gideon's Corpse

The front room was empty, save for a rug by the door with a row of flip-flops, and a second, small but sumptuous Persian rug in the middle.

Gideon paused, staring the rug. It was askew, out of line with the lines of the room.

“Prayer rug,” came Fordyce’s tinny voice over the intercom. “Pointing in the direction of Mecca.”

“Right. Of course.”

The only other item in the room was a Qur’an, open, resting on an elaborately carved book stand. Fordyce examined it and saw it was a bilingual edition, English and Arabic, and well worn. Many of the pages had been marked with strings.

It would be interesting to see which verses had attracted Chalker’s special attention. Gideon glanced at the page it was open to and his attention was immediately arrested by one verse, which had been marked:

Has there reached you the report of the Overwhelming Event?

Some faces, that day, will be humbled, working hard and exhausted.

They will burn in an intensive Fire.

They will be given drink from a boiling spring.

He looked up at Fordyce, who was also gazing at the book. He nodded slowly.

Fordyce pointed at the kitchen, then moved into it for a closer examination. It was as clean and bare as the rest of the apartment, everything in its place.

“Are we allowed to open the refrigerator?” Gideon asked Fordyce over the radio.

“Don’t ask. Just do it.”

Gideon opened the door. Inside was a carton of milk, a package of dates, leftover pizza in a carton, cheese, some Chinese food cartons, and other miscellaneous items. The freezer contained frozen lamb cubes, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and a bag of raw almonds. As he shut the door, Gideon noticed a calendar affixed to the side of the refrigerator with a magnet, a photograph of the Taj Mahal filling its upper half. In the calendar grid below, a number of appointments had been scribbled in Chalker’s hand. Gideon scanned them with interest while Fordyce came up behind.

Gideon grasped the calendar page and turned it back a month, then another. It was crabbed with cryptic appointments. “Jesus,” he murmured into the intercom, dropping the calendar back to the current month. “You see that?”

“See what?” asked Fordyce, staring at the empty calendar. “It’s blank.”

“That’s just it. The appointments just stop. There’re no appointments after the twenty-first of this month.”

“Which means?”

“We’re looking at the appointment calendar of a suicide bomber. And all his appointments end ten days from now. ”

They emerged into the street, the sodium lights bright after the dim apartment. Gideon blinked, tried to adjust his eyes.

“Ten days,” said Fordyce, shaking his head. “Do you think they’ll still try to maintain that schedule after all this?”

Gideon said, “I think it’s quite possible they might accelerate it.”

“Jesus Christ.” A chopper passed over, flying low, trailing a net of radiation detectors, and Gideon could hear and see the lights of others hovering in the sky over various parts of the city.

“They’re looking for the terrorists’ lab,” said Fordyce. “How far do you think Chalker could have gone, irradiated like that?”

“Not far. Quarter mile, at most.”

They had almost reached the barriers. Gideon pulled off his respirator and said, “Let’s keep the suits.”

Fordyce looked at him steadily. “I’m beginning to think you like stirring the pot.”

“We’ve got ten days. So, yeah, let’s stir the pot. Vigorously.”

“So what do we need the suits for?”

“To get our asses into the terrorists’ lab. Which we are going to go looking for—right now. The warehouses of Long Island City are right across Queens Boulevard—that’s an obvious place to start. I’m telling you, after getting irradiated, Chalker couldn’t have gone far from the scene of the accident. He was barely mobile.”

Fordyce at least didn’t say no. They reached the car, pulled off the suits, and tossed them in the back. Gideon kept the communications device, tucking it into his pocket and retaining the earbud, so that he could listen in on the chatter. Fordyce fired up the vehicle. As they moved beyond the barriers and eased through the rubberneckers—incredible they were still out at three AM—a change began to take place in the crowd. There was a movement, a wave of fear, even panic. People started moving away, slowly at first, and then faster. There were shouts and a few screams, and they began to run.

“What the hell’s going on?” Fordyce said.

Gideon rolled down the window. “Hey, you, what’s happening? Hey!”

A scruffy teenager on a skateboard careened past them, and others streamed by. A man came huffing up, face red, and seized the rear car door handle, yanking open the door.

“What’s going on?” Gideon shouted.

“Let me in!” he cried. “They’ve got a bomb!”

Gideon reached back, shoved him out. “Find another car.”

“They’re going to nuke the city!” the man cried, coming forward again. “Let me in!”

“Who?”

“The terrorists! It’s all over the news!” He lunged again at the car as Gideon slammed the door, Fordyce shooting the locks.

The man pounded on the windows with sweaty fists. “We’ve got to get out of the city! I’ve got money. Help me! Please!”

“You’re going to be fine!” Gideon shouted through the glass. “Go home and watch Dexter .”

Fordyce punched the accelerator and the car lurched out into the street; he quickly crossed the boulevard and gunned his way into a quiet industrial side street, away from the panicking crowds. It was incredible: lights were going on in all the apartment buildings surrounding them.

“Looks like the news finally broke,” Fordyce said. “The shit’s really going to hit the fan now.”

“It was only a matter of time,” said Gideon. His earpiece was starting to ramp up, voices swamping the public frequencies. The response teams were evidently becoming taxed by panicking people and emergency calls.

They were moving slowly along Jackson Avenue, amid a wasteland of old warehouses and industrial sites stretching off in every direction.

“Needle in a haystack,” said Fordyce. “We’ll never find it on our own.”

“Yeah, and once they find it, we’ll never get in, especially after that stunt we pulled back there.” Gideon thought for a moment. “We’ve got to find a lead that no one else has thought of.”

“A lead no one else has thought of? Good luck.” And Fordyce turned the wheel and headed the car back toward Queens Boulevard.

“Okay, I’ve got it!” said Gideon, suddenly excited. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

“What?”

“We’re going to New Mexico. We’re going to look into Chalker’s past life. The answer to what happened to him lies out west. Face it—we’re not going to accomplish shit here.”

Fordyce gazed at him steadily. “The action’s here, not there.”

“That’s exactly why we can’t stay here, wrestling with all these bureaucrats. Out there, at least we’ll have a fighting chance to make a difference.” Gideon paused. “Got a better idea?”

Unexpectedly, Fordyce grinned. “La Guardia’s only ten minutes away.”

“What? You like the idea?”

“Absolutely. And we’d better leave now, because I guarantee you that in a few hours every seat on every plane out of New York City is going to be booked for the foreseeable future.”

A low-flying helicopter churned overhead, trailing detectors. A moment later a voice cut through the babble on Gideon’s earpiece.

“ I got a hit! I’m getting a plume! ”