First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [28]
Jack took off his coat, but before he had a chance to sling it across her shoulders, Nina shook her head.
"Alli's life is beyond adversarial parties, beyond politics altogether."
"I suppose it would be," Nina said dryly, "in another universe."
Nina looked around at the thick stand of old oaks, gnarled into fantastic shapes, the sly shadows moving in and out beneath the cathedraled branches. "This place reminds me of something. I almost expect the devil to come bounding through the trees."
"Why d'you say that?"
Nina shrugged. "Ever since childhood, I've expected dreadful things to happen that I can't escape."
Jack inclined his head. "It's only the path the students take into the heart of the trees."
"Who knows what goes on here?"
They picked their way through the failing light into the clotted shadows of a dense copse of trees. The heavy rain had thickened the underbrush considerably, made the ground springy, in places almost marshy, impeding or slowing their progress. A moment later, ducking around a low-hanging tree limb, they burst out into a tiny clearing. The last rays of slanted sunlight turned the copse's heart a reddish gold, as if they had stumbled upon a coppersmith's workshop. An immodest west wind molded Nina's skirt to her well-muscled thighs, provoked eerie sounds from the interweaving of branches that spread weblike all around them.
At the base of a tree, where the root flare rose up just above the ground, was a mound of freshly dug earth.
"What have we here?"
She followed Jack as he knelt beside the mound of earth. Scooping the earth aside revealed a recently dug hole. Jack pulled out an odd-shaped item six or seven inches on a side wrapped in oilskin.
Nina's mouth opened. "What the hell—?"
Carefully, Jack brushed off the dirt and skeletal leaves that had adhered to the oilskin, peeled back the moist covering, revealed inch by inch what was inside.
Pale, almost opalescent flesh appeared to bleed in the ruddy sunset light. It was a hand, smallish, delicate of fingers, ringed, nails blunt-cut like a boy's. Nevertheless, it was the hand of a young girl—a young girl who had been immersed in water, judging by the deeply wrinkled flesh of the fingertips.
Nina looked at Jack, said, "Dear God, is it Alli Carson's?"
Without touching the hand, Jack scrutinized the gold-and-platinum ring on the pale, cold third finger.
"This is Alli's ring," he said. "I recognize it." He pointed. "Also, look at the nails, no polish or clear lacquer. Alli's nails are square-cut, like a boy's."
"God in heaven," Nina said. "She's been drowned."
NINE
I'VE JUST been reading over E-Two's latest manifesto," the president said when Dennis Paull entered the Oval Office. He had to make way for the National Security Advisor, who was just leaving.
Paull took a seat on the plush chair directly in front of the president's desk. The flags against the wall on either side of the thick drapes shone their colors in the burning lamplight. He felt as tired as they looked. Everyone around him did. In perpetual crisis mode, only the president, who leaned heavily on the advice of his close coterie of neo-conservative consultants, appeared sparkly eyed and rested. Perhaps, Paull thought, it was his faith, his vision, the absolute surety of the path his America was on, that made him burn so bright. Paull himself was ever plagued by doubts about the future, guilt about the past.
"The National Security Advisor brought it over himself." The president raised the sheets of paper. "This is pure evil, Dennis. These people are pure evil. They want to bring down the country, weaken it, make it more vulnerable to foreign extremists of every stripe. They want to destroy everything I've worked toward for eight long years."
"I don't disagree with you, sir," Paull said.
The president threw the papers to the carpet, trampled them underfoot. "We've got to root out E-Two, Dennis."
"Sir, I told you before that in the short time left us, I didn't think we'd