Free The Sign by Raymond Khoury Page A

about Danny?”
    “Well, last time I saw you, after the funeral . . . it was all so sudden, and we never really got a chance to talk about it. About what happened to him.”
    Matt seemed to study Bellinger. “He died in a helicopter crash. You know that. Not much more to tell.”
    “I know, but . . . what else do you know about it? What did they tell you?”
    From Matt’s dubious look, it was obvious he could see through Bellinger’s tangential, circumspect approach. “Why are you asking me this, Vince? Why now?”
    “Just . . . look, just bear with me a little here. What did they tell you? How did it happen?”
    Matt shrugged. “The chopper came down off the coast of Namibia. Mechanical failure. They said it was probably due to a sandstorm they’d had out there, but they couldn’t be sure. The wreck was never recovered.”
    “Why not?”
    “There was no point. It was a private charter, and what was left of it was scattered all over the ocean floor. Not very deep there, I’m told. But the currents are tough. There’s a reason they call the area ‘the gates of hell.’ ”
    Bellinger looked confused. “What about the bodies?”
    Matt winced slightly. The memory was clearly a painful one. “They were never recovered.”
    “Why not?”
    His voice rose a notch. “The area’s swarming with sharks, and if they don’t get you, the riptides will. It’s the goddamn Skeleton Coast. There was nothing to recover.”
    “So you—”
    “That’s right, there was nothing to bury,” Matt flared. He was angry now, his patience depleted. “The casket was empty, Vince. I know, it was ridiculous, we cremated an empty box and wasted some decent wood, but we had to do it that way. It helped give my dad some closure. Now are you gonna tell me why we’re really here?”
    Bellinger looked away, studying the faces around the bar. He felt a cold sweat rising through him, and his head throbbed with the strain of his confused, unsettling thoughts. “Did you watch the news today?”
    “No, why?”
    Bellinger nodded to himself, wondering how to go on.
    “Vince, what’s going on?”
    Just then, Bellinger’s BlackBerry beeped, alerting him to the receipt of a text message. Bellinger kept his hands on the table, ignoring it. He didn’t have the patience to deal with Jabba now.
    He fixed on Matt and leaned in. “I think Danny may have been murdered.” He paused, letting the words sink in, then added, “Or worse.”
    Matt’s expression curdled, and he looked like he’d been winded. “Murdered or worse? What could be worse?”
    “Maybe he’s being held somewhere. Maybe they all are.”
    “What?” His face was twisted with utter disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    Bellinger motioned with his hand to keep it down and leaned in closer. “Maybe they killed Danny and the others and faked the chopper crash. Then again, maybe they’ve still got them locked up somewhere, working on it against their will.” His eyes were twitching left and right, scanning the bar. “I mean, think about it. If you got a bunch of geniuses to design something secret for you, wouldn’t you want to keep them around long enough to make sure nothing went wrong when you finally used it?”
    His phone beeped again.
    “To design what? You’re not making sense.”
    Bellinger leaned in even closer and his voice dropped down almost to a whisper. “Something happened today, Matt. In Antarctica. There was this thing, in the sky. It’s all over the news. I think Danny had something to do with it.”
    “Why would you think that?”
    Bellinger was shaking visibly now, the words tumbling out of him nervously. His phone beeped again, but he ignored it. “Danny was working on something. He was playing around with distributed processing and he showed me some of his stuff and we talked about it and the possibilities were just mind-blowing, you know? I mean, he was brilliant, you know that. But then Reece showed up and whisked him away to