by Aimée Thurlo
“Let me try to recall her exact words. May I?” Bridget gestured toward the coffee. “Elka said she was paying me to help her punish Rogers and the others who’d been responsible for the loss of her family.”
“And Lee was mentioned specifically?” Diane asked.
“And you, Agent Lopez—if you tried to get in the way. Rogers was the main target because he’d recruited Jochen in the first place, then bailed on him when Jochen got caught.”
“‘Punish’ was the term she used? Not ‘stab,’ ‘shoot,’ ‘blow up,’ ‘assassinate,’ or anything like that?” Lee pressed.
“No, she said ‘punish’ two or three times,” Bridget said.
“To me that sounds like she meant Rogers, not the President,” Diane said.
“And Bridget was supposed to kill me. So Elka’s main target is Rogers,” Lee said.
“But that logic falls apart when you look at what’s happened, Lee,” Diane argued. “Elka’s attacked Rogers already, and she failed to give him anything more than just a few bruises and scratches. Logan confirmed that again last night when I met with him and the Secret Service. But at the hospital she nearly killed three people, not including us, and broke down two or three steel doors getting away. She’s as strong as an ox.”
Lee suddenly stood up. “Oh, crap. I get it now.”
“You get what?” Diane asked.
“Nobody wants to be scratched by a vampire, or scratch one either. Remember that comment Bridget made last night about blood brothers?” Lee asked.
“Elka wants to punish the CIA man by turning him into a vampire?” Bridget asked. “That would just make him harder to kill.”
“No, easier, and hell die in a particularly horrible way,” Diane said, suddenly understanding. “She must have mixed her blood with his when they were wrestling around in that shaded walkway.”
“Yes, and he’s probably feeling better right now than he has in his entire life—strong, alert, and very hungry. But he doesn’t know he’s a vampire,” Lee said.
“And his security will probably keep him inside until his meeting with the President. But the moment Rogers steps out of the car at the airport he’s going to get a faceful of New Mexico sunshine. He’ll turn into a ball of fire. Talk about being punished.” Diane reached for her cell phone. “We’ve got to warn him.”
“That does sound like Elka.” Bridget nodded. “Originally, I think she planned to shoot him while I created some kind of diversion. But what she did makes sense now, in a perverse way, and this way of killing him has given her hours to make her escape. It’s like a bomb that no explosives dog can detect. She may already be out of the state—unless she wants to watch Rogers go up in smoke.”
“It’s a spectacular way to punish someone, and there’s no way a forensic team will be able to establish what happened, so she’ll get away with murder. It’ll go down as another one of those spontaneous-combustion stories you see between the covers of supermarket tabloids.”
Diane raised her voice to the person on the phone. “Have him call me, Special Agent Lopez, before he steps outside. This is absolutely critical and concerns the woman who attacked him yesterday. We know she’s going to strike again. He needs to stay indoors and out of view until he speaks to me personally.” Diane rolled her eyes, obviously on hold now. “His security people are idiots,” she said, glancing at Lee.
“No, I can’t wait and have him call me back,” Diane insisted. “I’ll stay on the line while you get him.” Diane waited, getting angrier by the second.
“Shit, shit, shit. He’s going to die,” Diane said, disconnecting the call. “He’s been at some security briefing since six this morning. Maybe we can get over there in time to stop him from going outside.” She hurried to find her jacket, placing the holster and pistol on her belt while she moved around the room.
“Where is he now?” Lee asked. His jacket already on, he put on his baseball cap and dark glasses.
“He stayed in base quarters last night, then went to a secure area before dawn,” Diane explained. “The security man I spoke to wouldn’t even call him to the phone. He said they’d been getting crank calls all morning because of the presidential visit and he’d call me back later once I was ‘cleared.’ That asshole is going to get Rogers fried.”
“We’ll never make it there in time. All he has to do is step outside for a minute or two,” Lee reminded. “Try and get Logan on the phone. If he can send somebody to detain Rogers, we have a chance. I hope Rogers uses sunblock. At least that would give him a few minutes to save himself.”
Diane nodded. Logan was on speed dial, so the call only took a few seconds. Diane started to explain, got interrupted, then motioned to Lee. “Turn on the TV!”
Bridget got there first. The set came on quickly, and they could see a live broadcast from the Albuquerque Sunport. In the background was Air Force One. Stairs attached to a truck were already in place and the main exit door to the giant aircraft was open. Armed guards were stationed by the exit and at the foot of the steps, where a reception area had been roped off and a podium was already in place.
“The President arrived early,” Lee said flatly. “The security guy was bullshitting you.”
Diane nodded to Lee. She’d moved over where she could see the TV screen. “You have to keep him from stepping out of his vehicle,” she nearly yelled into the phone.
The camera remained focused on the entrance to the aircraft with the viewing field large enough to include the ramp at the bottom as well. “Turn up the sound a little,” Lee whispered, and Bridget reached over to a knob.
“… the local dignitaries scheduled to welcome the President to the Land of Enchantment are now making their way to the reception area,” the reporter announced.
“Get Rogers back inside!” Diane yelled.
There was an off-camera shout and the camera suddenly shifted to the left. People were scattering in every direction. A man in a suit was literally burning up, screaming and thrashing around in unimaginable pain. His clothes remained relatively untouched, but his face and hands shot out smokeless flames like blowtorches. A security man in a black jacket tackled him and tried to roll him on the concrete. “My God, my God, a man is on fire!” the announcer yelled.
Men came forward in ones and twos with their jackets and tried to smother the flames, but by then Rogers’s body was dissolving away, turning to ashes.
The camera turned quickly again, out of focus for a few seconds before capturing the image of Air Force One. Amid a chorus of shouts the guard at the aircraft door was helping an attendant close up the aircraft’s main hatch. Below on the runway the driver of the truck containing the ramp was already moving away.
There was the roar of aircraft engines starting up and the sound drowned out everything else. The camera shifted back to the spot on the concrete where Rogers had died. All that remained was a pile of men’s dark suit jackets, an empty suit, and two shoes lying alone with the socks half in, half out. Someone was spraying them with a small fire extinguisher while guards hustled dignitaries back to the motorcade of black vehicles. Chaos had been replaced with automatic responses based upon training and rehearsal.
The television camera shifted back to Air Force One, which was starting to roll across the concrete toward the runway.
Lee stepped over to Diane, who was shaking her head, unable to look at the TV anymore. “Well, Rogers wasn’t using sunblock, that’s for sure. I should have guessed what Elka was doing,” he said softly.
Bridget was as pale as a … vampire. “Is this what will happen to me?”
“Learn from what you just saw, Bridget,” Lee said. “Elka is over a hundred years old, isn’t she? Being smart has kept her from this fate. It’s more than luck. Rogers didn’t have a clue what he’d become, and his self-important attitude contributed to his death. You know what you are, and why becoming a vampire has to be such a secret.”
They stood around, thinking about what had just happened and what they might ha
ve done differently. Finally Diane spoke again. “Logan is going to call me back once things have calmed down a bit. He’s going to want to know why I was so certain that Rogers was in danger. He’s going to ask me how a man could burn up and still not set fire to the clothes he’s wearing.”
“Stick to the notion that you believed Elka had infiltrated the base somehow and was going to take a shot at him while all eyes were on the President. Because Rogers had betrayed her husband, you concluded that Rogers was the primary target all along,” Lee said. “Put your own spin on it, but make sure it fits the known facts, at least as mortals see them.”
“And I can explain her first contact with him at the hotel, when she attacked him, as her way of letting him know she was here and coming for him later. To put the fear of God in him, so to speak. Maybe she gave him a message that he didn’t mention to anyone else,” Diane said, the idea taking shape in her mind. “It’ll work.”
“Excuse me for butting in, but how will you explain his reaction to sunlight and the way he burned up without heating anything else around him?” Bridget was a little less pale than before.
“She won’t,” Lee said. “There’s no explanation that works.” He looked at Diane. “Maybe you can suggest that it must have been an undetected chemical in his aftershave or suntan lotion that finally reacted. Or point out that Rogers was overweight, under a lot of strain, and may have just spontaneously burst into flames from some biological imbalance. It doesn’t matter what theory you run past him, just as long as you don’t suggest he’d become a vampire without knowing it. Let somebody else bring that up and be laughed into silence. The idea is that you have no idea.”
Bridget nodded. “I’ll have to remember that. Have you seen other vampires die this way?”
Lee nodded somberly. “And, believe me when I tell you, the memory stays with you for as long as you live.”
CHAPTER 20
he shock of Rogers’s spectacular death passed quickly for Diane, but Bridget sat motionless on the sofa, riveted to the television screen. Regular programming had been preempted with a special report and commentators and hurriedly provided “experts” were still speculating on what had happened to Rogers.
Within fifteen minutes Diane’s cell phone rang. Lee, who was working on his final report concerning last night’s events, looked up as she answered the call. Diane nodded to him, confirming that it was Logan. Lee half listened, but Diane had a good handle on the necessary ignorance required under such bizarre circumstances. Within three minutes the call ended.
“Federal law enforcement is bringing in a forensic team from somewhere back East to examine the remains. What do you think they’ll find, Lee?” Diane asked.
“If they had let the state Office of the Medical Investigators look at the ashes and compare test data it would have become obvious that Rogers and the bodies over near Fort Wingate a few months ago all shared the same cause of death—burning due to an untraceable accelerant,” Lee said.
“I remember you said that when a vampire ignites like that it’s due to some kind of biological oxidation that doesn’t conduct heat to anything but vampire tissue. You think they’ll see the connection?” she asked.
“Eventually, if the feds listen to what the local experts tell them. You might get another call, too, or maybe me, because I’m Navajo. But I’ll just play dumb like before,” Lee said.
Just as Lee was getting up to pour himself more coffee, the apartment telephone rang. It was Lieutenant Richmond, so Diane, who’d answered, gave the phone to Lee.
“Lee, I want you to write up the report about Rogers and the German terrorist group before you complete the final paperwork on the Silver Eagle operation. Make sure to express your opinion on Rogers’s death. You see that on TV, right?”
“Yes, sir.” Lee decided not to comment about the change in timing that kept them from getting to Rogers before he stepped out into direct sunlight. Richmond would have had no input in that decision.
“Now, getting to the main reason for my call—a woman who refused to identify herself called the local state police office, asking to speak to you specifically concerning the German terrorists. She mentioned Elka Pfeiffer.”
“She’s not still on the line, is she?”
“No, and that alone was enough to make me consider that she’s not another crackpot. She asked the switchboard operator to contact you and ask that you make arrangements needed to take her return call. She said she’d call back in an hour. Then she hung up. All we could get was the number of an Albuquerque pay phone.”
“Interesting. Her call was recorded. Can you play it back to me? Maybe I can identify her.” Lee motioned Bridget and Diane over to the receiver, then put the phone on speaker so they could all listen.
“I’ll transfer the call back to our operator.”
Several seconds went by, then a woman with a German accent came on the line, speaking briefly as Richmond had described, then hanging up.
“That’s Elka,” Bridget whispered, her face pale again.
Richmond got back on the line just then. “Recognize the woman, Lee?”
“Her voice sounds familiar, but I can’t place it right now When she calls back, give her this number.” Lee looked over at Diane, who nodded her approval.
“You want me to set up a trace?”
“Exactly. Get Logan to okay it if it’ll speed things up. The Bureau has more juice,” Lee answered.
“Good thinking. Keep me posted,” he said.
“At least she doesn’t know where we are, apparently,” Diane said.
“What do you think she wants? Me?” Bridget said, her voice shaky.
“Elka may be fishing for information. How could she possible know you’ve contacted us? I’d think she’s more likely to assume you’ve just taken off for good. And now that it’s light outside, her own movements outside a vehicle are restricted,” Lee pointed out.
Unless, he thought, Elka already knew where Bridget was, and this was just a signal for Bridget to proceed with whatever plan they had cooked up to get rid of him. Rogers was finished; perhaps he and Diane were next. The one glitch with that theory was that it assumed Bridget would hear Elka’s call and there was no way Elka could have been positive that would happen. Maybe Elka had infinite faith in Bridget’s abilities as a con artist. And if Bridget was setting them up, there was no denying she was good at her job. They had lowered their guard around her somewhat—a remarkable thing, really, considering that they knew Bridget had fired her pistol after stealing it and they had no evidence to support her claim that all she’d done was a little target shooting.
“It doesn’t make sense for Elka to call us unless her business isn’t finished here,” Diane said. “Otherwise she would have stolen a car and been miles from here by now. Do you know what other identities she uses?” Diane asked Bridget, watching her reaction slowly.
“No, and I don’t know where she’s stashed her travel documents or her cash. We keep those details a secret even from each other. That way if one of us gets caught we can’t give away information we don’t know.”
“That makes perfect sense,” Lee said.
Bridget said nothing for a moment, then, in a thoughtful voice, added, “Maybe Elka’s still here because this time she doesn’t care if she gets caught.”
“You mean she’s not planning on making an escape?” Lee asked.
“Well, I told you how she’s acted since Jochen and the others died. This was going to be our last job, and she was going to pay me off so I could be on my own once it was over,” Bridget said. “Then again, she could be playing us for fools. Think of what she did to Rogers.”
“Death by cop is a choice a lot of disturbed people are taking these days, if that’s really what she has in mind. The only problem is, Elka could be very hard to kill,” Diane said.
“It’s possible she’s tried to contact me recently. There’s my laptop. Shall I check my E-mail?” Bridget asked.
“Go ahead.” Diane b
rought the small unit out of a desk drawer, where she’d kept it after bringing it inside earlier this morning, then hooked up the phone line to Bridget’s machine.
Five minutes later, Diane at the keyboard, they discovered three very recent E-mail messages from an Internet address Bridget said belonged to Elka. They all said the same thing, in English: “I miss hearing from you, please write.”
“Well, unless that’s some code you’re keeping from us,” Lee said, looking at Bridget, who shook her head, “we’ll have to wait and see what she wants when she calls me.
The phone rang twenty minutes later. “Hello, this is Officer Hawk,” Lee said, pushing the speaker button so they all could hear.
“We’ve never met, Officer Hawk, but you’ve seen my work, I assume?”
It was the same woman recorded earlier, accent and everything. Bridget nodded, confirming it was Elka.
Lee knew that other law-enforcement people, including Richmond and Logan, would eventually hear this conversation as well, so he didn’t want to say anything that would compromise Bridget or himself as being vampires. “You must be Elka Pfeiffer. I’ve seen your photograph. It’s good to be able to put a voice to a face. Too bad you missed the chance to kill your old CIA handler when you had the opportunity. After seeing how you shook off that bullet wound and later kicked open the hospital doors, I wonder why you weren’t able to just break his neck like you did with the Corrales police officer.”
“Being thorough, Officer Hawk? And making sure you don’t give out any information that might come back at you?” Elka was mocking him, but her voice seemed weary and strained.
“You sound tired, Mrs. Pfeiffer. And now you’ll never be able to kill Rogers. You did come to our state looking for revenge, didn’t you?”