In the year 2017, a devastating terrorist attack on San Diego causes the Second American Civil War. Various rebel forces form, and the government passes the Espionage Act, which allows for powers that reach beyond the Constitution. President Meryl Montessori does her best to keep DC stable, but when a body is found in her bed, along with a coded message, things go haywire.
The president hires an eclectic team of six men and women to help solve the senseless murder and break the threatening code. Team members range from stovepipe hat–wearing science advisor Dr. Frank N. Stein to beautiful NYPD Officer Rachel Rothberg, who, though a savvy and daring police officer, can never bring herself to lie to her mother.
Everyone is a suspect, including the director of the FBI. The team investigates a bizarre path that leads everywhere from the war zones of America to the gravesite of George Orwell. Soon, they find themselves on the Mount of Megiddo, where Armageddon is prophesized to begin. But despite the dire circumstances, things are not what they seem.
In the year 2017, a devastating terrorist attack on San Diego causes the Second American Civil War. Various rebel forces form, and the government passes the Espionage Act, which allows for powers that reach beyond the Constitution. President Meryl Montessori does her best to keep DC stable, but when a body is found in her bed, along with a coded message, things go haywire.
The president hires an eclectic team of six men and women to help solve the senseless murder and break the threatening code. Team members range from stovepipe hat–wearing science advisor Dr. Frank N. Stein to beautiful NYPD Officer Rachel Rothberg, who, though a savvy and daring police officer, can never bring herself to lie to her mother.
Everyone is a suspect, including the director of the FBI. The team investigates a bizarre path that leads everywhere from the war zones of America to the gravesite of George Orwell. Soon, they find themselves on the Mount of Megiddo, where Armageddon is prophesized to begin. But despite the dire circumstances, things are not what they seem.
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Overview
In the year 2017, a devastating terrorist attack on San Diego causes the Second American Civil War. Various rebel forces form, and the government passes the Espionage Act, which allows for powers that reach beyond the Constitution. President Meryl Montessori does her best to keep DC stable, but when a body is found in her bed, along with a coded message, things go haywire.
The president hires an eclectic team of six men and women to help solve the senseless murder and break the threatening code. Team members range from stovepipe hat–wearing science advisor Dr. Frank N. Stein to beautiful NYPD Officer Rachel Rothberg, who, though a savvy and daring police officer, can never bring herself to lie to her mother.
Everyone is a suspect, including the director of the FBI. The team investigates a bizarre path that leads everywhere from the war zones of America to the gravesite of George Orwell. Soon, they find themselves on the Mount of Megiddo, where Armageddon is prophesized to begin. But despite the dire circumstances, things are not what they seem.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781475977097 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | iUniverse, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 02/27/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 356 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
Read an Excerpt
The Mount of Megiddo
By James Luce
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2013 James LuceAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-7708-0
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Envelope
Hi! Really nice to meet you. Can't stay for long, 'cause things are really busy at my end. Let me tell you how it all started just a few hectic days ago just as I remember it.
The slightly short-sighted, deep-blue eyes of the president of the United States opened slowly and blinked twice. At first they sleepily focused on an elaborately embroidered, matching deep-blue silk pillow. With some effort, just in view over the top, the president could blurrily make out the right profile of a beautiful woman lying very quietly, her body covered up to her neck with their shared deep-blue silk bedsheet.
The room was chilly, almost cold, in the always overly air-conditioned master bedroom of the White House living quarters. Recollections of the ecstasies of last night's erotic excesses were mingled lovingly and more maturely with the joy of having so recently received this heavenly gift, now lying there so artfully, so calmly, so comfortably.
Almost reflexively the president's hand reached across the pillow to stroke her slightly tanned forehead. Fingers touched her, only to be jerked away in fright. The forehead was cold. Colder than the room. Colder than a corpse.
Tearing off the sheet, the president cried out in a smothered scream, "Sheryl! What's the matter?" Sheryl did not reply, but a blue envelope taped securely to her otherwise naked stomach mutely shouted back at the now fully awake president.
Grabbing the phone with one hand and ripping the envelope off with the other, the president started to punch in the code for White House security but hesitated, slowly replacing the phone into its charger. Better to investigate the contents of the envelope first. Might this be a suicide note?
The envelope contained a single page with two typed lines on one side and no signature. The president read the two obscure lines twice, in a panic, but couldn't understand them—not because of the panic but because they made no sense at all.
Oops! Just got another call. Like I said, things are hopping. Have to fly now. I'll be back later, but in the meantime, I'll adjust the settings so you can follow the action in real time. Remember, this is all happening several days ago. Hold on just a sec ... almost got it. Okay, here goes ...
Stumbling out of bed, the president not quite blindly reaches the bedroom door, throwing it open to find Steve, the six-foot-five, ever-vigilant, nocturnal Secret Service agent, slumped awkwardly in a straight-backed antique chair placed discretely several yards down the hall.
Steve, wake up; get off your ass and get the Doc! Now!
Still somnolent, Steve starts and stutters, What? What was that, Mrs. President? The doctor? What's the matter?
Just get the goddamn doctor ... now!
The agent leaps from his seat and runs down the hall, not mentally visualizing until just before he bursts into the doctor's bedroom that the president had been completely naked. "Yup. Bare-ass naked ... and really foxy for an old broad!" as Steve would injudiciously recount to one of his new coworkers a few days later, now that he had been reassigned and was safely distanced from "Her Majesty."
Fifty seconds after Steve burst into her bedroom shouting that something was wrong with the "chief," Dr. Kristin Koo enters the president's bedroom suite, a small medical bag in her left hand and a large question in the right side of her brain. What's Meryl on about this time? Another nightmare?
Dr. Koo sees the president, now in her bathrobe, head down as if in deep, isolated thought, pacing slowly between the Louis XIV dresser and the tall, elegant sixteenth-century Villefranche pendulum clock on the other side of the room. She's holding a piece of letter paper in her left hand and a drink in the other. Probably straight Scotch is the doctor's disapproving mental note.
This disapproving note vanishes when Dr. Koo sees a shape on the bed that looks very much like somebody hiding under the sheet. Who does she think she's hiding from?, muses Dr. Koo.
The president takes a long, steady pull from her glass, then for the first time seems to notice Dr. Koo's presence.
She's dead, whispers the president, responding to Dr. Koo's questioning nod toward the lump under the sheet.
Pardon me, Meryl, the doctor says. Then more loudly, Mrs. President. The doctor remembers she hadn't closed the door to the bedroom in her haste. Mrs. President, is this another one of your nightmares?
With an uncharacteristically flat and slow delivery, President Meryl M. Montessori mummers, It's my worst nightmare, Krissy. Somebody got through security and assassinated me. Only they killed the wrong woman. They killed the only woman I've ever loved.
While these last four sentences pour slowly out past the president's wide, sensual lips, Dr. Kristin Koo's pretty porcelain face glides smoothly from a look of clinical comprehension to surprise, to horror, and then at last to an expression of hatred and pain. The doctor's face then immediately returns to its normal, professional blankness, mixed with caring concern for her patient.
For Christ's sake, Krissy! Don't just stand there. Tell me what happened.
Of course, Mrs. President. But aren't you the one who's supposed to tell me? Had I been in bed with you last night I might have something to say on the subject of what happened. As it is ...
Don't push that button, Doctor. Not now. You know damn well what I meant.
Indeed, Dr. Koo had known and was already moving toward the opposite side of the bed to examine Sheryl's corpse. Now is not the time to analyze a dead affair. It's time to examine a dead body. Dr. Koo keeps this grotesquely ironic thought very much to herself.
Dr. Koo closes her painful memories and opens her small medical bag. She has had a bit of forensic experience in her past, but she's certainly not a qualified coroner. Regardless, before anyone else arrives, it is important that she at least try to find out what killed Sheryl Smith, recently resigned assistant national security advisor but currently, until this morning, performing very active services for the president.
Her first thoughts are not about the corpse, but rather about how truly gorgeous Sheryl had been in life and still is in death. Dr. Koo knows that Sheryl's brilliant mind is already wasting, the synapses disconnecting as the billions of individual cells packed tightly inside her cranium start the slow process of dissolving into mush. But her body is just as Dr. Koo had imagined it would be when she had these last weeks thought of her and Meryl embracing in this same room, this same bed, these same sheets that not so long ago the president's very personal physician had shared.
Shaking loose from this inappropriate reverie, Dr. Koo runs her hands dispassionately over the two short, rectangular contusions she observes on Sheryl's abdomen. These are slightly bluish-red and are located where the tape must have firmly held the now torn envelope that Dr. Koo sees balanced on the edge of the bed, where Meryl must have tossed it after ripping it off of Sheryl's stomach in what had surely been a moment of panic. The two strips of tape, still adhering to the envelope, are the approximate length and width of the bruises.
Dr. Koo surmises that the envelope had contained the letter Meryl was again staring at. Funny that she hadn't said anything about it or where she'd obviously found it.
When did you two fall asleep last night?
I don't know. After midnight. Why?
I'm trying to determine how long she's been dead.
Oh, Meryl replies shortly, having heard the strained, emotional timber of her initial reply.
How do you know it was after midnight?
We went to bed right after dinner around nine, and we were ... were talking for at least three hours.
Knowing Meryl's youthful sex drive, Dr. Koo doubts whether there was much conversation but accepts the fact that the couple did not fall into an exhausted slumber for at least three hours, maybe longer.
Did you wake up at any time before you discovered ... before you sent Steve to get me?
No.
Dr. Koo looks through her bag but can't immediately find a rectal thermometer. That can wait a few minutes. Probably just as well that Meryl not see Sheryl's body being "messed with" by the insertion of anything into her anus. Still, somehow she must get Meryl out of the room soon, because the loss of body temperature is useful in determining time of death.
Do you want to call anybody? Dr. Koo knows that the only secure external phone line is in Meryl's private office, adjacent to the bedroom.
Not yet. Meryl knows her voice is still too revealing of her shock and grief for her to talk to anyone but Krissy for the moment. Besides, she needs to know the cause of death. What could make a body so cold?
The doctor continues her visual examination of the corpse. There are no other signs of trauma anywhere on the face, neck, breasts, legs, arms, or feet. No other discoloration of the skin that might indicate certain poisons or asphyxiation as the cause of death.
The already bluish tinge to the contusions are consistent with death having occurred over an hour ago, but the idiosyncratic timing of that process makes the shifting from red to blue an unreliable indicator.
Dr. Koo is surprised to find such markings on the abdomen. She knows that even the passing of a tire or wheel over this pliable area does not normally leave an external bruise, only bruising of the less compressible internal organs. Women, even flat-bellied, firm ones, have more subcutaneous fat than men and therefore greater susceptibility to contusions. But even considering this factor, Dr. Koo would not have expected to observe any trauma of the skin caused by the mere pressing of tape onto the abdominal area. The pressure applied must of been very high or the abdomen unusually firm, such as if the stomach were distended by gas or a large volume of food or liquid. There's no swelling of the skin in the area of the contusions, indicating that the trauma was inflicted after death. The postmortem examination will reveal whether there is any subdural ecchymosis or discoloration under the skin in the area of the contusion caused by coagulated blood. If there is little or none, this will confirm that Sheryl was dead before the envelope was secured.
I assume you don't want anybody else in here before I've completed my postmortem. Hate to ask, but could you help me turn Sheryl over?
Do you have to?
Yes.
Meryl hesitates but comes around to the other side of the bed.
How do we do this?
You hold her feet together at the ankles. I'll take care of the rest. Just help me turn her over when I say, "Now."
Dr. Koo leans over the body and places her hands face up underneath Sheryl's left shoulder. Meryl reluctantly but firmly takes hold of the ankles.
Now.
Both women are amazed at how completely stiff Sheryl's whole body is as it is turns over.
My God! How could rigor be present so soon?
What?
And she's cold. I mean freezing.
What did you mean "rigor"?
Rigor mortis. After several hours a dead body stiffens like this. But not like this.
Quickly noting that there are no signs of trauma anywhere on the back of the head, neck, legs, arms, and torso, Dr. Koo repeatedly presses her thumb firmly along Sheryl's back and legs. The flesh is unyielding, very cold, and frozen solid like a beef carcass hanging on a hook in cold storage.
Help me turn her onto her back.
Meryl stands motionless, staring at her hands.
Meryl!
Meryl takes hold of the ankles while Dr. Koo again grabs under the left shoulder and together they pull Sheryl onto her back. Dr. Koo again repeatedly applies pressure, this time starting from the vulva, then the abdomen, the breasts, and the neck.
This is impossible! She's been frozen alive. She's been frozen from the inside.
Meryl's knees begin to buckle. She sways unsteadily for a moment and then rights herself.
There's not a single white, red, or yellow patch of skin anywhere on her body. Dr. Koo softly says to herself in a perplexed tone.
What the hell does that mean?
Frostbite, even the first stage of frostbite, isn't present, let alone any blisters. It's just not possible to freeze flesh without some degradation of the skin. Impossible!
Meryl stands mute, pale and unsteady, her body swaying back and forth several degrees off center.
Meryl, what was in the envelope you ripped off of Sheryl's abdomen?
This time when Meryl's knees buckle she collapses into an awkward sitting position on the carpet, looking much like a newly born colt after failing on its first attempt to stand. Meryl's mind mimics this posture ... completely confused, bewildered.
Meryl's thoughts tumble around ... How did Krissy know where I'd found the envelope? How did she know I tore it off? Meryl, of course, has not been privy to Dr. Koo's earlier, unexpressed forensic deductions. She did it! She killed her.
You bitch! You fucking bitch! You killed her! Oh God, you killed her!
Dr. Koo, looking down with astonishment at her former lover, now clearly temporarily insane former lover, reaches down to pick up the letter that Meryl has dropped on the floor before taking hold of Sheryl's ankles the first time.
Knocking Dr. Koo's hand out of the way with a vicious swipe of her clinched fist, Don't touch me you bitch! Meryl shrieks, thinking Krissy is trying to help her up off the floor.
I wouldn't dream of it, my dear. I just want to see what's in that letter.
Like bloody hell you do. You damn well already know what's in it. You just want to get rid of the evidence. Get the fuck out of here! Now, goddamn it.
All of Meryl's shock and confusion has been replaced by fury and disgust.
Now it is Dr. Koo's turn to be emotional and confused. She runs to the door, slams it open without pausing, and collides forcefully into White House chief of staff, Bob Marquis. At six foot four and 320 pounds, it's an uneven match. Stunned, Dr. Koo continues her rush through the door and down the hall to somewhere.
What's the hurry? Bob yells over his shoulder and then turns his attention back to where he was going, thinking, These dames are gonna drive me nuts someday.
What's her ... Jesus Christ, what's that! Bob's eyes focus on the naked body lying stiffly on the bed.
Sit down and shut up, Bob. Meryl's Koo-directed anger has not yet dissipated and is now directed at whoever is in the room.
Bob sits down immediately in the chair by the window, the one farthest away from the body, averts his eyes, and focuses instead on the bath-robed president, his newest boss. This sure as hell isn't one of her damn nightmares this time.
The president walks briskly to the door and closes it after checking to see if Steve is still there. He's looking down the hall in the direction Dr. Koo has just fled.
Bob. Sheryl is dead. I just accused Dr. Koo of killing her, but now I don't think so. Meryl's agile brain has in the few moments since Dr. Koo ran into Bob concluded that Krissy had probably deduced the placement and removal of the envelope simply by what she'd seen on the bed and body. Meryl puts off any thought about what to say to Krissy. There are too many other urgent matters to deal with.
First, you are not to say anything to anybody about this without my orders.
Second, you aren't to ask anybody any questions about this, including me.
Third, call Dr. María Piedra over at OCME. Tell her to drop her scalpels and get ready for a body to arrive from the White House. Tell her no excuses about being too busy. All her patients are dead, so they can wait a little longer in the DC morgue.
Bob interrupts the president with a quizzical look.
No. I don't want anything Federal involved just yet—that includes Bethesda Naval Hospital, the Bureau, nobody. OCME is District. It's got no lines of communication or authority leading anywhere but to the DC mayor's office. That jerk will do as he's told and shut up.
Why not Bethesda? Aren't they supposed to be the best?
Bob, you're too young to remember and you never read anything, so you probably don't know that it was the boys at Bethesda who botched the autopsy of JFK. I have got to know the truth about Sheryl, not some bullshit "scenario" cooked up by the ASS.
Bob nods his understanding, if not agreement. The president does not think highly of the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF, and the rest of the Federal law enforcement goons she refers to as the "Alphabet Soup Squad" or ASS for short.
Can we trust this Dr. Peedra? She sounds foreign to me.
Bob, Dr. Piedra was born in Boston and was a classmate and very, very good friend of mine at Wellesley. So you can trust her with this. She's been the boss at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for, what, ten years, and has examined more dead bodies than Dr. Cyril Wecht, another guy you probably never heard of.
When you call Dr. Piedra, that's Pee-A-drah, tell her that a Secret Service agent named Steve will be at the OCME receiving bay in half an hour. You and Steve wrap the body in that sheet and take it out the tunnel to his car. Not a Service car, his car. I want him locked in as an accessory to all this, not just a witness. Right?
Right, Boss.
Tell him to use his GPS for directions to OCME. There'll be a record of that download if we need it. Tell him to talk to no one except Dr. Piedra. Tell him to remind the doctor to call me when she's finished her preliminary autopsy. Then tell him to come straight back here and report to you in your office in person, not on the phone. I want his movements known by staff. Right?
Right, Boss.
Where was I? Yah. Fourth, Sheryl is going to "disappear" for a while until I find out whether somebody was trying to kill me or her. No police. Get a story to the press that Sheryl left the White House last night at 9:00 and didn't arrive home. You fill in the details and let me see 'em before the release. Right?
Right, Boss.
The only people besides us who know she was here all last night are Steve and Dr. Koo. I'll take care of her. You do one of your famous heavy jobs on Steve when he gets back from OCME; tell him he won't ever have any children or grandchildren if he talks, and then get him the hell out of here. Transfer him to Bismarck or Thule, someplace like that. Monitor all his calls and bug his office and apartment, wherever the hell he ends up. Right?
Right again, Boss.
And fifth, call Tom. Tell him to come here to my room immediately.
Tom Yager?
Who else, for Christ's sake!
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Mount of Megiddo by James Luce. Copyright © 2013 by James Luce. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Chapter 1: The Envelope.................... 1
Chapter 2: The Dwarf.................... 9
Chapter 3: The Message.................... 16
Chapter 4: The File.................... 27
Chapter 5: The Poem.................... 34
Chapter 6: The Girl.................... 49
Chapter 7: The Chinaman.................... 51
Chapter 8: The Call.................... 55
Chapter 9: The 38.................... 63
Chapter 10: The Antecedents.................... 77
Chapter 11: The Naked Truth.................... 83
Chapter 12: The Operation.................... 91
Chapter 13: The Preppie and the Politician.................... 116
Chapter 14: The Buried Memory.................... 127
Chapter 15: The Avenger.................... 139
Chapter 16: The Dark and Stormy Knight.................... 166
Chapter 17: The Cave Inn.................... 181
Chapter 18: The Two Bells Tavern.................... 209
Chapter 19: The Lo Life.................... 240
Chapter 20: The Headstone and the Indian.................... 263
Chapter 21: The Case Evidence Quandary.................... 274
Chapter 22: The Pulaski Coincidence.................... 282
Chapter 23: The Forest Run.................... 307
Chapter 24: The Hearing Aide.................... 338
Chapter 25: The Apartment.................... 341