She couldn't eat. It wasn't that food was totally repellent to her, just that she couldn't find her appetite. She had gone through the service flawlessly, standing and even singing the hymns at full voice. She didn't feel flooded with emotion and close to tears. She felt the opposite — empty, hard. Aside from those gruesome but uncontrollable efforts to visualize the cadaver inside the casket, her thoughts were not about her mother. She was thinking almost the whole time about her father.
And so that is why afterward, with the people coming and going downstairs, she abandoned her post of greeter at the door and ran up the stairs to what used to be their bedroom. How many times as a little girl had she turned that beveled glass doorknob to gain admittance to the inner sanctum? This time as she turned it, she could almost feel herself regressing, turning small as the years peeled away, like Alice in Wonderland.
Her father could be seen in the dim light, resting on his back in bed, a head propped up on a sea of pillows. He barely registered her presence. She sat down on the edge of the bed, more roughly than she intended, in part perhaps to shake some life into him. But there was precious little. She buried her face in his neck and caressed the thin yellow-white hair on his brittle skull.
It was at that moment that she became aware of someone else in the room.
He coughed slightly from the depths of the easy chair in the shadows in the corner. And it took no more than that for her to know instantly who it was — Uncle Henry.
"And how are you, my dear?" he asked. "How are you holding up?"
She thought the inquiry insincere and not deserving of an answer. Nor did she want to give him the satisfaction of having startled her. She sought refuge in silent stoicism.
Uncle Henry reached up and turned on a standing lamp. The light it threw struck her in the eyes and did nothing to illuminate him, as he sank back into the depths of the chair.
"I know it is hard on you. It's hard on all of us. Your mother was not the most" — he waved his hand in the air, searching for the right word—"impressive person perhaps to the outside world. But to those of us who knew her, and loved her, she had her qualities."
Tizzie's father stirred a little, moving one leg.
"And it's especially unsettling when a member of the elder group goes, one of the original circle, so to speak. And so much before her time."
This last sentence was delivered almost in a whisper.
He paused, then picked up the tempo, almost like a preacher.
"Still, we must not look back. We must move on. We must think of the living. Those who have their lives before them, or who are still holding on to life…" She could feel his gaze shifting to the bed. "Like your father here."
"What are you trying to say?" she demanded, her eyes flashing.
"Nothing that you don't already know." His voice was harsh now, bracing in the face of the truth. "He is not in good shape. He is not doing well."
"I do know that."
"Do you really?"
She was puzzled by the turnaround. "Of course."
"Then why don't you try to do something about it?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Why don't you help us? We're the group that is trying to help him. We're trying to find a cure for what killed your mother. Don't fool yourself — she did not die of old age."
"How can you be sure?"
"Come on, Tizzie. You saw how quickly she aged. She seemed to gain thirty years in just the last five. Have you ever seen anything like it?"
She remained silent, just shook her head.
"And your father has contracted the same thing."
"Is it a disease?"
"Perhaps. We have several people working on that question. A vaccine for what ails him. Someday, maybe, you will join them. You have skills in that department."
"Is that what you want me to do? Research?"
Uncle Henry coughed, bringing up some phlegm, which he removed with a pocket handkerchief.
"Not now. Right now there's something much more valuable that you can do. We have enemies. We need to know who they are and what they are doing."
Tizzie's heart sank.
"What can I do?"
"Very simple. You can tell us what they've found out."
"What they've found out?"
He suddenly raised his voice. "Don't play at being stupid — not with me."
"I won't. You want me to spy on people — on Jude."
"Now you're acting like your father's daughter. We want you to report on Jude… and others."
"Skyler."
"Precisely."
She looked over at her father, so frail in his bed, the brown of his freckles standing out against the white of the pillows.
"And it will help?"
"Without question."
"Then I will," she said.
"Fine."
"When… what do I do?"
"Downstairs in the study, you will find some paper. Simply write out everything you know — where they've been, what they've done, what they've said. Take your time, wait until the people leave, which will be shortly, in any case. I'd like it by this evening."
"I will."
"That's good, dear."
"I'll tell you everything. We were all together… out west… in Jerome."
"Fine. Write it all down. There will be more to do later."
Uncle Henry put two hands on the armrests and pulled himself up. He shut off the light, and the room turned dim.
"Will you help my father?"
"Yes, dear. Along with others. We must all do our bit."
He walked to the door and looked back.
"You should comfort him. I think he knows you. It's touching to see you two together."
"Good-bye, Uncle Henry."
"Good-bye, dear. I'm glad you told me about your gallivanting around the country with those two boys. It's good to reestablish trust with the gift of honesty. We already knew it, of course."
She heard his footsteps going down the stairs. It was hard to tell if his remark about trust had been sarcastic. He'd delivered it as if he were talking to a little girl, the very same one who had turned the glass doorknob.
Jude was excited by their accidental discovery. The implications were staggering.
He took Skyler into a small bar on K Street, where they took a corner booth, so they could think it through. He ordered them each a tall beer.
So Frederick C. Eagleton, the powerful deputy director of the FBI, an upstanding member of the establishment, was involved in this… this what?… this conspiracy.
Eagleton wasn't exactly a household name, but he was known to politicians and journalists and anyone else who followed the power game in Washington. Not since Hoover had there been a director with absolute power; some had even been figureheads. But the deputy director — that was a different matter. The deputy didn't come and go at the pleasure of the President. He was as constant and ubiquitous as the civil service, surviving from one administration to the next, accumulating more information, building the files, performing and receiving favors. If the director was a figurehead, then the deputy was the iron hand behind him, the one who pulled the wires and pushed the buttons. What some of those wires and buttons did, Jude didn't care to guess.
If Eagleton was involved, who else was? God only knew how big this thing was. And if it's a conspiracy, what holds it together? If there's a web, how far does it extend, and who is the spider sitting at the very center?
Rincon, of course. But how does he do it?
Jude sipped the beer slowly.
And exactly how was Eagleton involved? Had he been bribed to give the Lab protection? Was he in their pay? That didn't make sense. If he was on the payroll, why would he have made the trip to the island? That wasn't something an employee does. The way Skyler described it, it sounded more like a pilgrimage, a journey of faith. He went there with all the others to sit at Rincon's feet.