The 13 th tribe

[53]

Nevaeh sat alone in the forward cabin of the Tribe’s jet, a Bombardier CL-601: six recliners as fat, soft, and white as marshmallows, arranged in two rows flanking a central aisle. The lights were dimmed to a soft glow, and the sacred music of Gioachino Rossini-at the moment, Tantum Ergo — whispered through the air. Despite enough comfort and ambience to lull a binging crackhead to sleep, she was far from relaxed. Simply being at Mt. Sinai again, the memories it conjured, would have keyed her up for hours of soul searching and memory sifting-but shooting the boy, she’d be up for days grappling with that one. An accident, yes, but she wondered if it could have been avoided. Had she jogged right instead of left to avoid the man’s aim, the boy would not have entered the bullet’s trajectory.

Like a team of “cleaners” in a hit-man movie, sweeping in to scrub a crime scene of evidence, into her troubled mind marched her twin friends Justification and Rationalization.

“The boy interfered,” said Justification, gruff as a police sergeant, sure as a judge. “That made him an accessory after the fact, equally expendable.”

“Even if he was an innocent,” said Rationalization, always in the gentle teaching tones of her long-forgotten father. “You know unfortunate casualties come with the territory. All for the greater good.”

“The greater good,” she repeated, liking the sound of it. “If I’d allowed him to steal the chip we couldn’t carry on, we couldn’t do our job.”

“Given to you by God,” Rationalization clarified.

“He was a meddler,” Justification said. “And he paid the appropriate price.”

“I don’t know that I killed him,” she said.

“All the better, if you didn’t,” intoned Rationalization. “We don’t need to be having this conversation.”

She shook her head. “He didn’t look good.”

“He should be dead,” said Justification. “He sinned when he stole from Phin. He sinned by trying to stop you.”

“You did what you had to do,” said Rationalization.

“Yes, only what I had to do.”

“Our work here is finished,” said Rationalization.

And with that the twins were gone.

Feeling better, Nevaeh spun her chair around to gaze toward the rear of the plane. Against the walls, in line with the chairs, were two floor-to-ceiling compartments, each containing two bunks. The doors were closed, and she had always thought of them as crypts, sealed off from the world, a place of rest, if only for a time. Toby and Alexa occupied the two bunks on the right. Phin lay in the other. They’d done everything they could for him, which amounted to dressing his wounds and drugging him into oblivion.

At the end of the aisle, between the compartments, a door led to a galley, a bathroom, and storage closets. She considered going back there and changing out of her invisibility suit. Instead, she rose and headed for the cockpit. Normally Elias would be piloting, but with him sent off to Trongsa-and certainly back home by now-Ben was at the controls. She slipped into the copilot seat. Outside the plane, the black Mediterranean Sea sparkled with the reflected light of a billion stars overhead.

“It’s a tomb back there,” she said without looking at Ben.

“You’re complaining?”

“Just saying. Our numbers are dwindling.” From the corner of her eye, she caught him looking at her and faced him. “Eight now, from forty.”

“It was bound to happen,” he said.

“We should talk to the ones who haven’t died, build back up to fighting numbers.”

“They’re scattered,” Ben said. “Lost causes.”

“Ben-”

“Did you put the chip in the safe?”

She wanted to talk more about rebuilding the Tribe, going after the ones they’d lost, but she knew Ben had said all he would. She sighed and unzipped a breast pocket. She reached in and pulled out the microchip container.

“I’m not so sure technology is making our task any easier,” she said, thumbing it open.

“Easier considering the size of our target. As you pointed out, we’re only eight now, can you imagine…”

She stopped hearing his words. All of her senses narrowed into the container, which held a plug of polyethylene foam and nothing more. She used a fingernail to dig out the plug, examined it, peered into the empty cylinder. She patted the outside of her breast pocket, searched inside. She looked up and saw Ben watching her.

“Are you having fun with me?” he said.

“It was in the boy’s hand,” she said. “I just assumed.”

Ben took it with the calm of a man learning that his flight would be a few minutes late. He punched buttons on the control panel, into the GPS. He said, “Remember what Phin said? He saw the chip in its container. That changed between then and when you found it. Either it fell out or the boy removed it. I’m betting on the boy.”

“You think he stashed it somewhere?” Nevaeh said. If so, and the boy was dead, they’d never find it.

“Let’s hope he had it on him,” Ben said. “Call Sebastian. Tell him we need to know where the child is now. Have him check the area hospitals and morgues. We’ll also need that helicopter again, and I want the same pilot.”

Calm as he was, Ben had a way of communicating reproach with his eyes. He hadn’t leveled condemnation at Nevaeh yet, and she wasn’t going to hang around until he did. She plucked the satellite phone out of its dashboard-mounted cradle and stood, only to plop down again as Ben forced the plane around.