The CNN cameras focused a lens on the third floor, where a man was standing in an open window. After a moment he emerged from the pane, holding on to the building’s side. The CNN correspondent noted the man’s actions.
“There appears to be a hotel guest desperate to leave the nightmare that is the Grand Royal,” the CNN correspondent said. Russell felt her irritation rise. The situation was dire enough without dramatic narration from the media.
The supervisor for her assigned area, the director of European Operations, stepped up next to her. Dr. George Cromwell was in his early sixties and had spent his entire career in the CIA. He’d risen from the ranks during the final days of the cold war and was set to retire in two more years. He wore a rumpled shirt and khaki pants, having clearly just left the comfort of his own home.
“That guy falls and he’s a dead man,” Cromwell said. Russell nodded. The man clinging to the wall wore drawstring pants in a black watch pattern with a black T-shirt. His feet were bare and he moved along the slender ledge with precision, never looking down. The CNN camera telescoped, and the man’s profile came into focus. Russell gasped.
“What is it?” Cromwell said.
“That’s Jon Smith.” Russell stepped closer to the flat screen. Smith’s image filled the forty-two-inch monitor.
“You know him?” Cromwell said.
“He’s army, and was engaged to my late sister, Sophia.” Both Wendel and Jordan looked up from their computer screens. Wendel gave Jordan a glance, her eyebrows raised, before returning her attention to the monitor.
Russell scanned the room. “Someone get me a list of hotel guests. Didn’t we have one?” An officer handed her some papers. She ran her eyes down the first page, then the second, then the third. She pointed to a name that she showed Cromwell. “There he is.”
“US Army. He’s a doctor?” Cromwell said.
Russell nodded. “And a molecular biologist. Highly skilled.” She waved a hand at Jordan.
“Do we have a channel to the fire department? Put me through, could you? But remember to use the cover ID.” Russell’s cover included a fake name and false picture on the CIA website, and her title was acting CIA director of public liaison. She’d been using it for the past month when sending out communiqués to various European agencies about current threat levels.
Russell resumed pacing while she waited for the fire department call to be connected to the wireless headset she wore. She watched Smith make his way across the wall and felt her stomach twist with tension. While her feelings about Smith were complicated, she didn’t want to watch him fall to his death. She stopped pacing when she heard the chief of the fire department address her.
“This is Brandweercommandant van Joer.” He spoke English with a British accent.
“Commandant, can you get a ladder to that man? Quickly?”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot. My orders are to keep my men away from the building. They have no body armor, and we’re afraid that the terrorists will kill them before they even maneuver a ladder into position. We’re waiting for our tactical team to contain the situation first.”
“But he might fall at any moment.”
“I’m sorry. But I’d like to point out that he also has a gun in his waistband. It’s entirely possible that he is one of the terrorists.”
“No, no, he’s one of ours.”
“But he has a gun…”
“Of course he has a gun! He’s United States Army.”
“What’s he doing at a WHO conference with a gun?”
Russell hesitated. She knew that Smith’s activity as a Covert-One operative often placed him wherever a crisis was happening, but in this instance his presence at the hotel could have been purely coincidence. His real job also placed him at the scene of disasters and near disasters, and it was entirely possible that he was there in that capacity as well.
“He’s an infectious disease specialist. I imagine he was invited by WHO to attend.”
“I’m very, very sorry, but I can’t risk my men. Again, I’m sorry.”
“Ms. Russell, Beckmann’s in position. I’m patching him through,” Wendel said, and she tapped on her keyboard.
Russell watched the screen. Smith was almost to the corner when she saw a masked man’s face appear at the window to his left. The terrorist maneuvered an assault weapon out and trained it on Smith.
“Beckmann, fire,” Russell said.
4
Smith turned his head to stare into the eyes of the man who was preparing to kill him. He expected some emotion there. Perhaps anger that Smith had eluded him so far, or glee that he finally had Smith where he wanted him, but all he saw was a calculated coldness. A gunshot cracked and the man’s head whipped back. Bits of blood shot out of a hole in the man’s temple, splattering across the window above the terrorist’s head. The bulk of the brain matter that Smith knew would be scattering as well remained contained within the man’s hood. The assassin slumped forward and his body hung there, half in and half out of the window. His fingers loosened and the assault weapon fell straight down. It made a clattering sound as it hit the ground below.
“Thank you, whoever you are,” Smith whispered the words.
Another attacker stuck his head out of the window.
Stupid, Smith thought. The gunshot echoed again and the second man slumped. This one hadn’t pushed all the way out, and his body fell backward, into the room.
Smith heard rather than saw the reaction of the crowds of police and fire personnel behind him. A man’s voice on a loudspeaker kept repeating the same sentence over and over in Dutch, and out of the corner of his eye Smith saw the crowds shifting, moving. One camera-toting observer stepped backward, keeping the lens of his commercial-grade equipment pointed at the hotel and Smith, but moving to a new position. The perimeter grew wider, farther away. There would be no ladder for him anytime soon.
Smith redirected his attention to moving to the corner. His fingers ached at each knuckle from the strain of gripping the small protrusion, and his biceps burned. His toes grasped the stone piece well enough, but his calves were in pain from being locked in the same position. He made it to the corner and carefully reached his hand around the point and grasped the section on the other side with a sigh. At least now he could stretch out his arms, which provided some relief to his biceps.
He shifted around the corner and was confronted with another window. This one had a hole in it where a stray bullet had exited. The curtains had been pulled, but Smith was able to peer into the room through a small opening between them. He saw a man’s foot hanging off the edge of the bed. The foot didn’t move. Presumably the terrorists had already visited this room, and the man was dead.
Smith glanced down, looking for an awning or something below that he could jump into with the hope of a semisoft landing. There was nothing. He wasn’t willing to keep going. The burn in his limbs signaled that they were reaching the failure point, and he could feel the beginnings of a cramp forming in his calf. He carefully released one hand from the ledge, balancing himself as well as he could, and reached behind and pulled his weapon out of his waistband. He flipped the gun over and hit the butt on the glass next to the bullet hole, trying to widen it enough to knock out a section. He couldn’t get his body at an angle that would allow him to generate any force, and as a result the blows were weak and ineffectual. The pane held.
While not a fitness fanatic, Smith worked out every day to maintain his strength and flexibility, and as a result he knew his abilities. Clinging to the ledge was pushing his muscles to the limit, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to continue inching along. He felt the panic that he’d been tamping down since the start of the ordeal begin to break through to the surface. He swallowed once and prepared to continue forward until his limbs failed completely.
He heard a gunshot crack, and the window shivered as a bullet shot through it, a few inches above and to the right of the existing hole, but this one making an entry patte
rn. Whoever had shot the terrorists was now shooting at the window. Slivers of glass flew and Smith closed his eyes against the shards. A second crack broke through the dark and another hole appeared, this one completing a triangle. Smith felt hope surge in him. The sniper knew how to shatter a window. A triangular pattern of shots would overcome even bulletproof glass, which this window certainly was not. He heard the double pane start to crack, and long fissures snaked out from the holes. Smith pulled out his weapon and tapped on the glass with the gun’s butt to speed it along. The entire pane came crashing down. He moved toward the opening, breathing a sigh of relief as his hand wrapped once again around the aluminum window edge. He swung a leg over the frame and lowered himself into the room on the other side.
Smith fell onto the rug and lay there a moment, breathing hard. He heard a smattering of applause from the police officers at the perimeter, but he was in no mood to celebrate with them. He was back in the heart of the disaster, with a dead man inside the room and no idea what awaited him outside. The terrorists still roamed the hotel.
Water sprayed down on him from the sprinkler system, but the alarm had stopped. The phone in his pocket began to ring and he jerked in surprise. He reached down and pulled it free. The display read “unknown.” Smith paused, wondering if he should answer, but decided that it might be Klein calling again from a different phone. He clicked it on and put it to his ear, saying nothing.
“Mr. Smith, this is the man who just shot the terrorists and the window. May I ask a favor? Could you collect any bullets that you find? The two that I used on the terrorists are meant to explode in a manner that renders them untraceable. Not so the two that I used on the window.”
Smith rose to standing while he took the extraordinary call. The man’s English was inflected with a slight accent that Smith thought might have been German or Swiss, and he spoke in a calm, relaxed manner, as if shooting terrorists dead were a daily occurrence and didn’t rattle him in the least.
“Why do you need them?” Smith asked.
“My employer would rather no questions be raised about my role here. I am technically not supposed to shoot people on foreign soil, no matter how despicable they are.”
Smith had initially thought that the man worked for Covert-One, but now he knew that was not possible. Covert-One was an organization so removed from governmental checks and balances that Smith doubted it was subject to any rules about shooting undesirables on foreign soil.
He searched around the far side of the bed, looking for the two bullets that had completed the triangle, and found them embedded in the wall. He propped the phone between his ear and shoulder while he used his fingers to dig them out. He dropped the bullets into his pocket.
“I’ve got them. How did you get this number?”
“My employer gave it to me. I don’t think there are any more terrorists on the third floor, but I don’t advise that you remain there. I suggest that you make your way down the north stairwell. I’m heading that way and will be prepared to cover you as you emerge. There’s a cordon of Dutch police forming, but I saw a second contingent of attackers on the move away from the hotel. This night is far from over.”
Smith ran through his mind the people who would have the expertise to shoot with the accuracy that this man had along with the ability to gain access to his private cell number. He decided that the caller was either employed by a European military group or was part of the intelligence organization of another country. His use of the term “foreign soil” meant that he wasn’t Dutch.
“CIA, Mossad, or MI6?” Smith said.
“I’ve been informed that I am to escort you safely out of that hotel if at all possible. You’ll be safe with me.” The man had dodged the question, but Smith decided to take him at his word. He’d just saved Smith’s life, and options were few in any event.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
He swept an eye over the dead man on the bed, but didn’t bother to take his pulse; the large bloom of blood growing on the man’s shirt where the bullet had entered his chest left little room for doubt. He checked his weapon and headed to the door, preparing to face whatever was out there.
5
Nathaniel Fred Klein nodded to the Secret Service officer manning the entrance to the White House as he passed. About sixty, Klein was medium height, with a craggy, lean face and lanky body. To an outsider, Klein’s rumpled suit, ever-present pipe, and piercing eyes that revealed a mind constantly churning with ideas lent the impression that he was either an academic at a nearby university or a member of a Washington, DC, think tank. He stood erect and moved easily, and more astute observers of human nature would have noticed that he carried with him an air of authority. In fact, as the head of Covert-One, Klein managed one of the deepest black operations in the US intelligence community. Covert-One was bankrolled with discretionary funds that were available only to the president and were not tracked by any oversight committee or taxpayer-accountable governmental office. The president alone directed their activities and had formed the unit after an earlier terrorist incident involving a virus that nearly spread a pandemic across the country. Klein ran the day-to-day operation, and now he was headed to a private meeting called by the president. He walked through the White House halls, headed to the Oval Office. Another sentry there nodded him forward.
President Castilla rose from behind his desk and moved around it to meet Klein halfway. In his forties, trim and driven, the former governor of New Mexico appeared young enough for the demands of the job, yet mature enough to have the experience the position required. Klein found him to be a thoughtful and intelligent man, but he noticed that the bits of gray in his dark hair had increased. The presidency had a way of taking a significant toll on the men elected to the position, and Castilla was no different in that regard. This latest bad news from The Hague certainly didn’t help.
“Good to see you,” Castilla said as he shook Klein’s hand. “I suppose you’ve seen the images from The Hague?”
Klein nodded. “Believe it or not, I have a Covert-One operative on site. He was attending the WHO conference as an expert.”
Castilla raised an eyebrow. “Did he make it out of there?”
“He was the man hanging from the window ledge. I haven’t had any contact since he pulled himself back into the hotel.”
Castilla’s eyebrows flew up even higher. “For a moment there I thought we were going to see a terrorist kill an innocent man live on television. I don’t have to tell you what a coup that would have been for the attackers.”
“I was impressed with the sniper. Was it a member of a Dutch SWAT team?”
Castilla shook his head. “No, he was CIA. He’s still on site, but deploying to a new location. I’m told that the terrorists are fanning out.” Castilla waved Klein to a seating area with four armchairs and a coffee table in the center.
“That’s not good. Has anyone taken responsibility?”
“Not yet. In fact, the main terrorist organizations are denying responsibility.”
Klein grunted. “Unusual for them.”
“The CIA believes that attacking during a WHO conference is most likely not a coincidence. My concern is that the attackers’ real target is either one of the attending scientists or the biological products that several brought with them.”
“My operative found a handful of photos in the pockets of one of the attackers.” Klein recounted Smith’s information about the photos.
Castilla sat back while he listened. “Let’s put aside the photo of the MI6 agent and focus on the woman. Could she be an attendee? Maybe one of the scientists?”
“That’s a definite possibility. Once I get my hands on the photos, I’ll have them analyzed as quickly as I can.”
“I have some further bad news, though. I received a call from WHO’s director-general. Three of the scientists at the conference brought with them samples of a new strain of cholera, an antibiotic-resistant strain of hepatitis B, and some particularly nasty E. c
oli. They were to be transferred to a secure site for analysis by an international consortium of biologists. The samples themselves were initially considered small enough to be of limited use to any potential terrorist, but we’ve just learned that the cholera strain can multiply with astonishing speed. In two weeks that sample will have grown exponentially. If any of these get into the hands of the terrorists, we’ve got to assume they’ll dump it into the water supply somewhere. I don’t need to tell you the kind of mass deaths that could occur if such a thing were to happen.”
“Are these the only samples we should be worried about?”
Castilla pondered the question. “The rest were ‘good’ bacteria. Everything ranging from live yeast cultures to a newly discovered bioelectric bacteria that can charge batteries without the need for a separate electrical source.”
“Where were they kept?”
“On site in the hotel safe in two different locked stainless-steel coolers. The good bacteria as well as the resistant strains. Because the samples were so small, extra security measures were deemed unnecessary, particularly in light of the quality of the Grand Royal’s safe. It’s one of the best. Over the years, the jewels of several royal families have been secured there while their owners conducted diplomatic affairs. I’m told it can withstand a blast of the nature of what we’re seeing, but the concern is that the terrorists will have found the code that opens it. Covert-One needs to begin tracking down these samples and the scientists that carried them and we need to reacquire any that are taken before they become viable bioweapons.”
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