Sun, Aug 20, 2006
Sara Collins, second wife of the Junior Senator from Georgia, disappears at a gala reception honoring her work in children's education. The continuing efforts to find what has happened to her, which slowly reveal details of Sara's checkered past, are told from the points of view of the Senator, his children, an ambitious TV reporter and her cameraman/lover, and the FBI agents assigned to the case. The Agent In Charge, Graham Kelton, is himself haunted by a previous case that ended badly.
Sun, Aug 27, 2006
Against Agent Graham Kelton's advice, Senator Jeffrey Collins goes on TV to post a reward. Fisherman Peter 'Cap' Manning finally calls to tell the hot line he believes to recognize Sara Collins as his 12 years ago partner Nicky Johnson, but that info drowns in masses. A hair in her hotel-room proves the senator's son Max visited his till six months ago completely estranged mother, Jeffrey's first wife Jessica Nevins, who may be manipulating the kid. Marcy still only contacts Max; a threatening man who asks how well she knows her boyfriend Ben Wilson brings a bloody sweater, she asks Kelton to check for Sara's blood- no type match. The FBI checks all surveillance cameras in Atlanta to track presumed kidnapper Mark Valera's route; Kelton sees a possible car switch or drop inside a tunnel, which proves a complex structure to search but has an obvious fingerprint in Sara's blood; the booby trap in the place she was held in explodes, Kelton is trapped but gets out by exit 929, the number on the Nathan prayer card. Ex-mayor Curtis McNeal's wife Amanda's autopsy shows she lived two months after her disappearance; Curtis tells Kelton to ask the senator how 'they' control him, then says it's all his fault and commits suicide on the spot; Jeffrey still won't tell Kelson his secret.
Thu, Nov 16, 2006
An expert edits fragments from the senator's TV speech to manufacture a fake declaration. Sara talks in her cell to a fellow prisoner and gets the fake message: Jeffrey calls her disappearance the best thing that happened to his campaign; she reminisces how he proposed to her. Agent Michael Tyner arranges for Lucas and Mei an interview in Atlanta with theologian on death-row Aaron Hensleigh but he only refers to the Flood, the Tower of Babel and Sodom&Gomorrah. A surveillance camera saw the driver of a van which escaped from the warehouse shot dead; in it Lucas finds a well-hidden Roman cypher wheel, designed for a specific coded text, but in Qumran-Hebrew, like the Dead Sea scrolls. After seeing her baby ultrasound with Ben, Marcy repeats her blackmail to Wallace, who calls her bluff as the senator's career could also sink; she promises Judy spicy live talk on TV. Two fake repairmen steel the wheel from the FBI evidence room, but are both killed in a shoot-out; they had photos of Sara and Aaron's wife Deborah Hensleigh in a car model released two years after her alleged slaughtering. Sara's cell neighbor claims to be Deborah. Kidnapping Deborah only makes sense as leverage on Aaron, to decipher Ezechiel, if his execution is postponed, which can follow from the Brocket case which Wallace Rainer could decide if nominated; even this news doesn't make Aaron talk to Lucas, just beg to find and protect Deborah. Marcy has a miscarriage and demands blood tests for foul play. Rainer is finally nominated but still denies to Jeffrey to have Sara.
Sun, Nov 12, 2006
Marcy tells Ben they're expecting a baby, he starts acting paternal. Senator Collins promises in a press conference his vote for Judge Wallace Rainer's nomination as U.S. Supreme Court justice; Marcy overhears an ominous insistence call by Wallace. Judy fails to flirt her way into a tip from Lucas. Morell's file on Sara predates Jeffrey's election by years, and minutes before his suicide he sent a long number by never before used secure satellite phone to an untraceable destination. / Morell had a uniquely designed exclusive entrance chip implanted. Sara's captors, a whole team which uses injections, feels she's finally 'ready', pretend to her Jeffrey refuses to cooperate and insist he took Jessica back in. The unique number fits a freight train arrival in Atlanta; it doesn't stop but Lucas and Mei observe cars stopping there for a box transfer, both with fake license plates; he tails and enters the abandoned warehouse they came to alone, without a search warrant; men with masonic wrist-tattoos carry the box into a lab, it contains only a page from an ancient document in Hebrew script, which is joined and scanned with several other pages. Lucas finds the card Christo made opens the door to the data-server room and starts sending copies by PDA, but is caught by an armed guard; bluffing with Mei's single shot as surrounding FBI agents' gets him to escape, but the crooks get away with the parchments and trigger the data-servers to auto-destruct. The partial copies are identified by an expert as Ezechiel 40, part of the missing chapters in the Dead Sea scrolls, the oldest Bible transcript. Theologian Aaron Hensleigh, who claimed to have seen it ten years ago, illegally excavated under Jerusalem's Temple Mount, is scheduled to be executed in five days for murdering three colleagues and his wife. Marcy, who lied to Ben she was feeling weak, visits Judge Wallace Rainer, accusing him of controlling the kidnappers and threatening to go public about their past unless he calls them off and withdraws his candidature.