Find Virgil (A Novel of Revenge)

by Frank Freudberg

  “Black Jack here. Talk to me.”

  “This is Bandit. Urgent. Repeat. Urgent. We’re on the third floor, directly above the ballroom along the west wall. We’re showing a hit on the meter. We’re showing a hit on the meter.”

  Franklin whispered urgently. “Black Jack to all even-number units. GO! GO! GO!”

  Simultaneously throughout the ballroom, from out of nowhere, fifteen or twenty figures, all undercover agents, began moving, then running, toward the exit. They headed for the third floor.

  Franklin snapped his fingers and Brandon, wearing a business suit and sitting in the back row of folding chairs, looked up. A second later, he and Franklin were racing from the room as well. Franklin and Brandon took a stairway to the third floor.

  They burst into a nearly vacant ballroom, much smaller than the Majestic. Agents in jumpsuits were huddled several feet back from a tablecloth-covered banquet table they had upended. A large black cardboard box sat there, a humming, grinding sound coming from within.

  “Where’s my bomb team?” Franklin bellowed.

  “Any second, sir, they’ll be here any second,” an agent said.

  Franklin stepped forward. Sweat formed and glistened on his massive dark brow. He turned and looked around. “All you people out of here. I’m opening it. Muntor probably put together a pretty primitive bomb. Maybe it’ll be simple to disarm.”

  No one moved.

  “I said out of here!”

  His men stayed with him. Franklin took a step closer and reached out toward the flap that obscured the box’s contents from view.

  The sound of a gun cocking caused everyone to look up and freeze. Except Franklin. He had taken another step closer to the box.

  “Move another inch toward the box, and I’ll blow your fucking arm off.”

  Franklin looked up. He didn’t recognize the man with the gun, but he knew the uniform. The ATF Bomb Disposal Unit. The man did not lower the weapon when he realized he was pointing it at the FBI Deputy Director.

  “I’m operating under the assumption that you’re stone crazy, sir, and I can’t let you near that box. Step back.”

  Franklin half-raised his hands and did as he was told.

  The bomb disposal personnel moved in and the other FBI agents backed farther away. Franklin ordered his men to leave.

  This time they did.

  “The device’s display reads seven minutes and twenty-two seconds and counting,” the bomb team leader said, crouching next to the box. “My guess is someone started the clock twenty-two minutes and thirty-eight seconds ago, giving himself a full thirty minutes to get out. I don’t see a receiver or a timer. That means either one or the other’s hidden inside and therefore not visible, or…”

  “Or what?” Franklin bellowed.

  “Or twenty-two minutes and,” the bomb team leader looked at the still-counting display, “now forty-four seconds ago, someone stood right here, right in this room, and started the countdown manually.”

  “Then he could still be in the hotel,” Brandon shouted. “Oak, broadcast an evacuation order. Get everyone out of this building now.”

  “No,” Franklin said, turning to a senior agent. “Seal the building first. I’m not letting Muntor get out of here. Once we’re airtight, broadcast the evacuation. Every human being leaving this building gets eyeballed. Regardless of age, sex, race. Go.”

  Franklin turned to another agent. “You. Call FBIHQ. Tell them we’ve found a device.”

  “And Brandon…” Franklin said, waving for him to join him in a sprint toward the elevators.

  “What, sir?”

  “And, Brandon, you were right,” Franklin said, already half-winded. “Rhoads is a damned jinx. He’s not here, we get lucky.”

  The elevator arrived and Franklin slipped in as soon as the doors parted enough for him to fit. Brandon grinned and banged his shoulder painfully on the still-opening elevator door as he squeezed in after his boss.

  115

  10:25 a.m.

  The Royal Carland Hotel

  New York

  In a fifteenth-floor hotel room, Martin Muntor awoke. He did not know how long he had slept. It could have been ten hours, it could have been forty-five minutes. When the injections wore off, they had that disorienting effect. All he knew for certain was that today was the day.

  What woke him finally and got him out of bed was a splinter of daylight that fell across his closed eyes. The rays had seeped in through the space in the heavy opaque drapes where he had failed to draw them tightly enough together.

  He moved weakly into the bathroom, bumping his knee into the doorframe and then steadying himself at the bathroom sink. He chose not to look at himself in the mirror.

  The cold water he splashed on his face ran down his neck and onto the perspiration-soaked crew neck T-shirt he had worn to bed. He ineffectually toweled himself off. He had barely enough energy to make it back to the suitcase stand in the bedroom. He searched frantically, tearing a sweatshirt, maps, socks and underwear out of his suitcase.

  Then he found the leather kit bag and lovingly removed the contents, setting each object carefully on the dresser.

  He prepared another injection quickly. There was no time for his full ritual.

  Muntor closed his eyes for several minutes while the drugs began their course through his veins and gave him new life and new, indomitable power.

  Invigorated, Muntor took a shower, changed into clean clothes and sat down on the easy chair facing the television. He pulled a brochure out of a file folder and stared at the floor plan of the ballroom, studying it for the hundredth time.

  “All ye who enter here,” he said to the floor plan, jabbing a finger at the entrance of the Grand Imperial Ballroom, “abandon hope.”

  Muntor put the brochure on a table and slid open the closet door. He removed first one, then the other, large duffel bag—the same ones he had at the dilapidated schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. He unzipped them both, removed the equipment and dressed in the fireman’s gear, the bright yellow protective overcoat, and the full-face helmet and hood.

  Dizzy with excitement and fatigue and drug-induced energy, Muntor sat on the unmade bed to pull on his protective leggings and high rubber boots, then rose to wrestle the orchard-fogger tank onto his back. He leaned over toward the telephone, opened the faceplate, and dialed the hotel operator.

  “Help! I just got off the elevator. I was upstairs at the observation deck with the kids,” he said, not attempting to disguise his voice. “A policeman’s been shot, and another one’s just lying there on the floor. You need to help them. I’m going back up to see what I can do. Send help!”

  The observation deck, Muntor thought as he hung up. A long, slow ride on the elevators, on the other side of the hotel from where the meeting is. And every available man will be sent, far away from me. While they’re coming up, I’ll be going down.

  Muntor pulled the faceplate back into place and adjusted the oxygen supply to the mask. He took the orchard-fogger’s long, silver nozzle in his hand. He wrapped his finger around its trigger and teased it. It felt good. He knew he’d be able to use it. The trigger and trigger-guard assembly reminded him of the big-bore hunting rifle he had used to shoot up junkyard cars as a kid. Funny he hadn’t thought of that until now.

  He walked quickly into the hallway to get an elevator down before the police and security people commandeered them all rushing to the aid of their fallen comrades. He reached the bank of elevators. He pressed the “Down” button and waited to descend.

  116

  11:08 a.m.

  The Royal Carland Hotel

  New York

  The American Investor Relations Society meeting had begun precisely at eleven in the Grand Imperial Ballroom. Rhoads, holding his leather portfolio, entered the room and looked around.

  Three entrance doors gave ac
cess to the small ballroom. Inside, under a dozen sparkling chandeliers, a field of elegant luncheon tables had been set. One of the tables, flanked by a podium, had been hurriedly reserved for Pratt when it was learned he would attend.

  Rhoads took a seat at one of the tables near the swinging doors that led into the banquet kitchen. The position afforded a view of the entire room and all entrances.

  Forty of the nation’s most influential tobacco business leaders were present, including the CEOs of three other Big Eight companies, heads of mutual funds, investment houses, a cadre of handpicked journalists, the president of the world’s largest agricultural conglomerate, congressional supporters, and two tobacco state governors.

  Pratt wasn’t scheduled to speak for another fifteen minutes, and Rhoads knew he wouldn’t arrive until a couple of minutes before then.

  Rhoads scanned the room methodically. Either the FBI’s covert surveillance teams were so good that Rhoads couldn’t pick them out from nearly forty multimillionaires, or they simply weren’t there. In any case, he felt exposed.

  He continued scanning and soon spotted two Old Carolina security people. He had provided them with explicit instructions. “No matter what happens, ignore me. I’m no one you know,” he had said.

  Several times, Rhoads’s heart leaped out of his chest when a man attired in a suit—what Rhoads thought Muntor would be wearing—appeared and seemed to be about the same size as Muntor. One by one, Rhoads eliminated them.

  When ear-splitting electronic fire-alarm bells began to clamor from recessed public address speakers in the ballroom ceiling, Rhoads’s body switched into a fight-or-flight level of adrenaline and muscle tension. Heavily oxygenated blood rushed into his eyes and ears to make those organs acutely sensitive. His nostrils flared back imperceptibly, a biological hat-tip to a mammalian history when sense of scent weighed heavily in the survival formula.

  Had Muntor set the building on fire or tossed a bomb? Rhoads had not anticipated that. Muntor was a product tamperer, not a Hamas guerrilla. Rhoads’s gut instinct was to race to one of the hotel security people to find out what was being broadcast on their radios. Instead, he decided to stay still, keep low and alert. He thought of the lesson learned too late by the quarry of the Cordozo fish in the crustacean tank in Baltimore. When you least expect it—expect it.

  After a minute, the alarm’s deafening noise was interrupted by a recorded electronic female voice instructing occupants to exit the building and avoid using the elevators. Some conference attendees rose slowly, wondering if the alarm was real. Several minutes passed before firemen appeared wearing fluorescent yellow coats with “NYFD” marked in bold, reflective letters across their backs. They trudged through the crowded room in high rubber boots, burdened under heavy white helmets, steel air tanks strapped behind them like scuba gear, and aerator hose mouthpieces strung like medallions around their necks.

  “Just hang in here for a few moments, please,” one of the Old Carolina employees announced from the head table. “We’re getting information that this is probably a false alarm.”

  Something about the firemen nagged at Rhoads.

  A battalion chief spoke into a radio and a reply crackled back. The men waded across the floor and disappeared behind the swinging doors leading into the banquet kitchen. A few attendees rose to get coffee from an urn attended by a white-coated member of the kitchen staff. The firemen’s casual demeanor encouraged everyone to pay little attention to the incident.

  The firemen, Rhoads wondered. What was it about them?

  He remembered Dr. Trice’s alert. “Thoughts or ideas that have a different texture about them… they are usually gifts from the universe.”

  He remembered a part from the transcript of Muntor’s call to the radio program National Talk. Something like, “I’m just starting a backfire, fighting a huge fire with well-placed little ones.”

  Bingo!

  Rhoads knew. Muntor thought of himself as a fireman. He had sent them here. His little game. A little foreshadowing. Of course! Muntor called in the alarm. From his seat, Rhoads craned his neck, seeing little. Impatient attendees rose and milled.

  Rhoads began to doubt himself. He used a pen to write “RESERVED” on the back of an envelope and left it on his seat.

  Am I imagining a Muntor who isn’t here? Did someone in the kitchen trigger the alarm?

  He took his portfolio in hand and headed toward the kitchen to find out.

  A dozen kitchen workers stood outside the door talking and yawning. They waited for the firemen to leave.

  Rhoads walked past them. He felt the weight of his gun in the portfolio. Inside, six or eight firemen were spread about examining various sections of the huge, gleaming stainless steel-filled kitchen. The area was lit brightly like an operating room.

  Wide, tiled aisles dotted every few feet with small drainage grates lying between rows of steel food-prep tables and sinks. Banks of ovens lined one wall, and hooded grills and scores of giant pots and pans and baking trays were stacked on top of a long row of refrigerators and freezers. The aroma of brewing coffee and the strong odor of commercial disinfectant wafted together, confusing the olfactory senses.

  Rhoads moved forward. One of the firemen turned to him at the sound of the swinging door.

  “We need you back on the other side of those doors,” he said, pointing a finger.

  “Security,” Rhoads answered and kept coming. The fireman shrugged and turned back to the others in his troop.

  The fire department battalion chief was satisfied that the call, made from a house phone in the hotel, had been a hoax. One of seventy or eighty false alarms each day in New York. He was about to radio the dispatcher and report that the alarm was unfounded but waited on one of his men for the last report—the results of a gas leak analysis.

  One of the firemen took a metering device from his pocket and stood over a field of gas burners built into the top bank of ovens. He waved the device like a wand above the burners and with his thumb pressing a button on the meter. In a moment, he looked at the meter’s display and then snapped it off, putting the device back into his pocket. He gave a thumbs-down to the captain, who then spoke into the radio. Another fireman used a key to open a utility box on the wall. He reached in and flipped a switch. The clanging alarms went silent. The swarm of firemen left, walking past Rhoads, saying nothing to him.

  As the last fireman passed through the large doors, several kitchen staffers entered.

  “We need you to stay outside for a couple more minutes,” Rhoads said, raising his hand. The worker did not recognize him but assumed he had the authority to make the command.

  “Okay, but the firemen said…”

  “Just another couple of minutes.” The workers left.

  Everything seemed to be in order, but Rhoads wanted one quick look around.

  He strode quickly across the floor, carefully stepping over a puddle of greasy liquid that had dripped from packages of defrosting ground meat, and inspected a door on one side of the kitchen.

  Securely locked.

  He turned back the other way, just as quickly, toward the conveyor belts rattling silverware and saucers and cups through the dishwashing steamers. He squatted down and peered under them.

  Nothing there either.

  He exhaled as he rose.

  Better possibilities in the ballroom. Better get out there.

  As he walked toward the swinging doors, in an alcove behind the wall of refrigeration units, Rhoads heard something, a heavy, labored breathing, someone trying to catch his breath. He stopped and froze, then, silently, tiptoed closer, pressing his back to the cold ceramic that lined the wall. He steadied himself with a flat palm pressed against the wall in order to lean forward as far as possible, trying to cock his ear and hear around the comer.

  He heard it again. Something like a wheeze, like a musical sound coming from an off-
key human accordion. At first, he thought maybe a fireman had been abandoned by his fellows.

  No, he realized, they had all left together.

  He moved forward another few inches. He heard the sound again, then someone grunted softly. Rhoads got down on his hands and knees, his portfolio under him, lowering his head almost to the floor. The tiles were clammy and ice cold. He moved his head another inch forward, just enough for one eye to see back into the semi-darkness of the alcove. There it was, a figure squatting down, pushing or pulling a box. Rhoads couldn’t see. He eased back, straining to keep his balance. He drew a deep breath, steadily, slowly. He edged slightly forward, to see a little more deeply into the alcove. In close quarters, an inch was a mile.

  There it was again, now he heard it quite clearly.

  A wheeze.

  He pulled his head back, feeling for the portfolio. He opened it, reached in, and got a grip on his nine-millimeter with his right hand. He crouched lower on his hands and knees. He couldn’t, of course, be sure that it was Muntor. Err on the side of caution.

  Still on all fours, Rhoads hunched awkwardly over the portfolio, wanting to slide it out of his way, but that would make noise. He could move himself more quietly than he could slip a leather portfolio over a floor. He moved forward a bit.

  With a surge of cold panic emptying itself into his gut, Rhoads asked himself the question he should have asked a full minute earlier. What’s in that box?

  Rhoads wanted to get a lay of the kitchen. As he eased back to improve his view, the heavy steel-lipped rim of a fire extinguisher smashed into the side of his head and sent him flying forward, stunned. Head bathed in blood, his right eye swelled shut instantly. Rhoads had held on to his gun, but he was acutely disoriented. In the next instant, he covered his head with his left arm and rolled away. Tiny sparks of white light poured into his brain from the tear in his scalp. He felt blood drip behind his ear in a warm rivulet. Rhoads found himself half under the shelf of a food preparation table. He crawled out and stood up, eyes burning into that dark alcove, trying to ignore the clanging in his head.