Sacred Stone

“An old Stearman, if I remember correctly,” Hunt said.

“Who was flying?” the agent asked.

“Well, Hal was,” Hunt said, “who the hell else?”

“Mr. Hickman is a pilot?” the agent asked quickly.

“Well, he was back then,” Hunt said. “If Howard Hughes did it, then Hal tried it too.”

The agent raced for the telephone.

“THIS ADDS ANOTHER layer to the picture,” Hanley said. “Now we not only need to recover Abraham’s Stone from Hickman, we have to switch it back without being detected. The president has advised us that he wants to keep the Saudi government out of this operation if at all possible.”

At that moment one of the hundred-inch monitors in the conference room lit up. The screen was split in half vertically, and Stone could be seen on the left side. “Sir, I’m sorry,” he said, “I know you asked not to be interrupted, but this is important. Watch the other half of the screen.”

An image filled the right half.

“This is from a pair of cameras the CIA stationed at the locks on the Suez Canal. The image was recorded within the last fifteen minutes.”

The camera panned across an old work ship. A couple of crewmen were working the lines as the ship passed through the locks. A single man stood on the rear deck drinking coffee. The camera caught him looking up.

“I overlaid it with the program Ms. Huxley created,” Stone said.

Everyone in the room watched as the 3-D image floated over the man. The edges of the lines matched up perfectly. When the man in the boat moved, the computer-generated re-creation tracked along.

“Sir,” Stone said quickly, “that’s Halifax Hickman.”

“Where’s the ship now, Stoney?” Cabrillo said.

The left side of the screen showed Stone in the control room glancing at another monitor. “She’s out of the locks and slowing to come into Port Said, Egypt.”

“George—” Cabrillo started to say.

“We should be fueled and ready by now,” Adams said, rising from his seat.

Four minutes later the Robinson lifted from the deck. It was two hundred miles from the Oregon’s position to Port Said. But the Robinson would never reach Egypt.

51

VANDERWALD’S PLANE CAUGHT a tailwind and they arrived a half hour early.

Traffic was nonexistent; it would be another hour before commuters began to clog the roads heading to work, and he arrived in front of his house only fifteen minutes after stepping off the plane. He gathered a pile of mail from the mailbox on the street, slid it under his arm and carried his single bag to the front door.

Once he was inside the entryway, he set the bag on the floor and placed the mail on a desk.

He was just turning around to close the door when a man appeared from the side and the sound of footsteps came from the hall leading to the kitchen.

“Morning, shitbird,” the first man said, pointing a gun with a silencer screwed to the barrel at Vanderwald’s head.

The man said nothing else. He simply lowered the weapon and shot Vanderwald in both knees. Vanderwald dropped to the floor and began to scream in pain. The second man was in the entryway now, and he crouched by Vanderwald, who was rolling on the floor. “Do you want to explain this invoice we found on your computer for a DC-3?”

Two minutes and two well-placed shots later, the men had their answer.

A minute later the first man delivered the coup de grace.

The two men exited by the rear door and made their way through an alley off the rear of the house, then down a side street to where they had stashed their rental car. They slid into the seats, and the passenger peeled off his gloves and dialed his cell phone.

“The target just returned from delivering a DC-3 to Port Said, Egypt. He won’t be a problem any longer.”

“I understand,” Overholt said. “You can come home now.”

“I NEED A real-time shot of the airfield at Port Said, Egypt,” Overholt said to the head of the National Security Agency. “We are looking for a DC-3 airplane.”

The head of the NSA shouted instructions to his satellite technicians.

“We’re redirecting,” he said. “Hold on.”

While he waited, Overholt reached in his desk drawer and removed his wooden paddle with the red rubber ball attached and began to furiously bang it back and forth. The wait, which took but a few minutes, seemed to stretch for hours. Finally the NSA head came back on the line.

“Stand by, we’re directing the picture to you.”

Overholt watched his monitor. An image of the airfield from high above filled the screen. Then it started to reduce itself until the DC-3 was visible. The image slowly reduced down and increased in detail. There was a man walking across the runway carrying what looked like a blanket close to his chest. He walked directly toward the DC-3 and, as Overholt watched, he began to open the side door.

“Keep on the DC-3,” Overholt ordered. “If it lifts off, try to track it along.”

“Will do,” the NSA head said, disconnecting.

HANLEY WAS SITTING in the control room with Stone when the telephone rang.