Monk nodded to her, grateful, yet at the same time, slightly unnerved.
He had needed the airboat to fly up the channel, drawn by the sure trail of their prey. Marta’s bombardment had been intended only as a distraction to keep them from seeing the rope strung across the channel.
She had done her job brilliantly.
Pyotr clung to her. After explaining the plan earlier, the boy had sat with Marta and held out the shotgun shells. He spoke slowly to her in Russian, but Monk suspected the true understanding between the pair arose from much deeper. In the end, she had taken the shells in the toes of her feet, leaped into the trees, and vanished.
Monk poled out across the next channel. Here a sluggish current propelled them onward. Toward the distant shore. Though relieved that his trap had worked, Monk knew with certainty that they were sweeping toward even greater danger.
But he had no choice.
Millions of lives were at stake.
Still, Monk studied Marta and the three children. To him, with no memory of another life, they were his world. They were all that mattered. He would do all he could to protect them.
As he urged the raft along the current, he recalled the painful flashback at the cabin as he had half drowsed.
The taste of cinnamon, soft lips…
What life had been stolen from him?
And could he ever get it back?
12:04 A.M.
Washington, D.C.
Just after midnight, Kat hung up the phone and stood up from the table. She glanced toward the window into the neighboring hospital room. She had finished a conference call with Director Crowe and Sean McKnight. The two were up in Painter’s office, waging an interdepartmental war from their bunker. Both men were engaged in a power struggle across the various intelligence agencies.
All over the fate of the girl.
Kat, with her own background in the field, had offered what counsel she could, but she could do no more. It was up to the two of them to find some way to thwart John Mapplethorpe.
Kat knew where she could do the most good.
She crossed toward the door that led into the hospital room. It was guarded by an armed corpsman. She paused by the window of one-way glass and stared into the room.
Propped by pillows in the bed, Sasha sat with a coloring book in her lap and a box of Crayola crayons. With an intravenous line still in her arm, she worked on a page, her face intent but calm.
Sasha suddenly glanced up from her work and stared straight at Kat. The glass was mirrored on the other side; there was no way the child could see that she was there. But Kat could not shake the sense that the girl was looking at her, could see her.
To one side, Yuri sat in a chair. He had pulled Sasha from the brink of death, proving his skill. He seemed as relieved as Kat at the girl’s recovery. Satisfied and exhausted, he sat slumped in his seat, chin on his chest, lightly drowsing.
Kat turned and nodded to the guard. He had already unlocked the door and swung it open for her. She crossed into the room. McBride still sat in the same chair. He had only moved to make a few phone calls and to use the restroom, always under guard.
On the other side of the bed from Yuri, Lisa and Malcolm stood, both with charts in hand. They compared notes and numbers, as cryptic as any code.
Lisa smiled at her as she joined them. “Her recovery is remarkable. I could spend years just studying the treatment regimen.”
“But it’s only a stopgap,” Kat said and nodded to Yuri. “Not a cure.”
Lisa’s expression sobered and turned back to the girl. “That’s true.”
Yuri had related the long-term prognosis for Sasha. Her augment shortened her life span. Like a flame set to a candle, it would burn through her, wear her away to nothing. The greater the talent, the hotter the flame.
Kat had asked how long Yuri expected the child to live. The answer had turned her cold. With her level of talent, another four or five years at best.
Kat had balked at such a pronouncement.
Contrarily, McBride had seemed relieved, expressing his assurances that American ingenuity could surely double that life span, which still meant Sasha would not reach her twentieth birthday.
Lisa continued, “The only hope for her is to remove the implant. She would lose her ability, but she’d also survive.”
McBride spoke up behind them. “She might survive, but in what state? The augment, besides heightening her savant talent, also minimizes the symptoms of her autism. Take the augment away, and you’ll be left with a child disconnected from the world.”
“That’s better than being in the grave,” Kat said.
“Is it?” McBride challenged her. “Who are you to judge? With the augment, she has a full life, as short as that might be. Many children are born doomed from the start, given life sentences by medical conditions. Leukemia, AIDS, birth defects. Shouldn’t we seek to give them the best quality of life, rather than quantity?”
Kat scowled. “You only want to use her.”
“Since when is mutual benefit such a bad thing?”
Kat turned her back on him, frustrated with his arguments and justifications. It was monstrous. How could he rationalize any of this? Especially with the life of a child in the balance.
Sasha continued to work in her coloring book. She drew with a dark green crayon. Her hand moved rapidly across the page, filling in one spot, then another, totally at random.
“Should she be coloring?” Kat asked.
Yuri stirred, roused by their talking. “Some release is good after such an episode,” he mumbled, clearing his throat. “Like opening a pressure valve. As long as the augment is not activated remotely, triggering her, such calm work will ease her mentally.”
“Well, she does seem happy,” Kat admitted.
As she worked, Sasha’s face was relaxed with a faint ghost of a smile. She straightened and reached a small hand to Kat. She spoke in Russian and tugged at her sleeve with her tiny fingers.
Kat glanced to Yuri.
He offered a tired grin. “She said you should be happy, too.”
Sasha pushed her book toward Kat, as if she wanted Kat to join her in coloring the pages. Kat sank into a seat and accepted the book. She frowned when she saw the girl had not been filling in lines but had been working on a blank page. With amazing clarity, she had drawn a scene. A man poled a wooden raft through a dark forest with a faint suggestion of other figures seated behind him.
Kat’s hands began to tremble. She saw who manned the raft. She struggled to understand. It looked like Monk. But she had no memory of Monk ever being on a raft. Why would the girl draw such a thing?
Sasha must have sensed her distress. Her smile wilted to confusion. Her lips trembled, as though fearful she had done something wrong. She stared from Yuri to Kat. Tears glistened. She mumbled in Russian, apologetic and scared.