“Yeah. That’s not tops on my to-do list.”
Rhoads and Dr. Trice hurried out of the locker, toward the ballroom. Rhoads looked through one of the round windows in the swinging doors.
“Go the other way,” he said. “There’s got to be another exit back here.”
“Find a phone,” Rhoads said. “Call 9-1-1. Tell them Virgil’s sealed the Grand Imperial Ballroom. Then hang up, call back, tell them again. They take multiple calls seriously.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
124
11:44 a.m.
“Are you rolling? I want you to roll tape,” Muntor ordered the trembling cameraman who stood on a platform in the corner of the room, hired to videotape the conference. The man was a freelancer who earned his living recording business events for free—and then selling an edited tape back to the company involved. “You make sure you get everything.”
The man nodded and put his eye to the camera, training it on Muntor in his yellow hazardous materials garb. Out of Muntor’s view, an FBI agent leaned over at his table and whispered urgent words into a hand-held radio.
Muntor moved away from the chained door and trudged forward several paces. He kept his arm raised, clutching the dead-man switch.
Panic was in the air.
Those nearest him cringed.
“Do not move!” he shouted at them. With his faceplate open, they could see his sallow, sweaty face, his agitated eyes. He moved towards the entrance to the banquet kitchen. Muntor knew he had secured Rhoads adequately, but was worried that other security people may have gotten in through a rear entrance. It would have been easy enough to kill him, but Muntor knew Rhoads. He would get to the bottom of all of it. With Muntor dead, Rhoads would turn his focus to Old Carolina and bring them down, the same thing Muntor had tried to do with his exposé of the tobacco companies.
Keeping his back to the wall, Muntor reached the doors and regarded them with concern as he stood between them and a small plastic trash can.
“Now for that demonstration,” he said. He eyed the people near him. One middle-aged man in particular stood out. Was it his build or the quiet way he watched? Muntor did not know, but he was certain the man was some kind of agent. Muntor looked right at him but spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear. “You are about to hear a small explosion. It is harmless. Keep your eyes on my thumb.”
Muntor narrowed his eyes and looked toward the cameraman. “Are you getting this?”
The cameraman nodded several times too many.
“Good,” Muntor said to him. “Because if you continue to obey, you’ll keep on living. And you’ll keep on living with a lot more money than you have now. Why? Because I, at this very moment, give you … what’s your name?”
“Alex S. Taylor,” the cameraman, said, barely audibly.
Muntor looked into the camera from across the room. “I hereby give Alex S. Taylor all rights to my video documentary, Muntor’s Last Stand. You can find a copy of it in my house in Philadelphia. In my basement in a fireproof steel safe. Make sure you get yourself a good, tough lawyer who will work on contingency and be able to fight the Feds, force them at least to make you a copy of the tape I’m sure they’ll say they need for evidence against me. But they won’t. The consideration is that you must agree to edit today’s affair into the film as its grand finale. Do you understand, Alex S. Taylor? Do you agree?”
The cameraman again nodded rapidly many times.
“Out loud,” Muntor instructed.
“Yes, sir. Yes sir, I understand.”
Muntor then stretched his arm high and faced the device towards the ballroom. He lifted his thumb and beside him the trashcan exploded with a loud blast and fell over, smoking. Most people ducked and screamed, others merely flinched. This was happening so fast. No one quite believed it. Moans of fear and hysterical cries rose toward the ceiling along with the odor of sulfur and a column of blue-black smoke.
“Just a firecracker,” Muntor said. “But it detonates when my thumb comes off the switch.”
One woman murmured, “Please, God, please.”
At once, Muntor’s hand was again raised high. He had taken another device from his pocket.
“This one,” Muntor said, looking towards the new dead-man switch he held, “makes a boom you don’t want to hear.”
Despite the powerful injection he had administered a little more than an hour earlier, the weight of the protective clothing and the bulky steel tank began wearing on him.
Near Muntor, a woman stood up at her table. Her voice trembled as she said, “Mister, before you kill us all, I’m going to say something.”
Muntor turned and shouted back, his voice breaking. “Sit down. You have nothing to say. This is my day.”
“I don’t care. I’m saying it.” She turned and faced the rest of the room. She shook. Terror flashed in her eyes. “I have to say it. I don’t care if I die, as long as I get to say that Mr. W. Nicholas Pratt,” she glared at him across the room, “the high and mighty CEO of Old Carolina Tobacco, Inc., is responsible for the death of my husband, Anthony Dallaness, and the death of Dr. Loren Benedict. And I have evidence that proves at least one of those killings. My name is Mary Dallaness, and I have worked at Old Carolina for ten years.” She turned to Muntor. “You give me that hose, and I’ll kill him myself.”
“Mary!” Pratt’s voice boomed. He had shouted into the microphone at the podium and startled even himself. The sound echoed through the ballroom.
“Sit down, I say!” Muntor screamed. He snapped the faceplate down and raised the trigger nozzle as high as the dead-man switch in his other hand. A half-dozen people threw themselves to the floor.
“No, you’ve got to listen to me,” Mary cried.
“Silence!” Muntor said.
Pratt’s heart pounded. He gripped the comers of the podium, determined to remain standing.
A man stood up and raised his empty hands to show Muntor he held no weapon. He turned to Mary and bellowed, “FBI, lady. You sit down. Right now. That’s an order. You’re endangering everyone in this hotel. This man doesn’t want to harm us. Don’t push him.”
The agent quickly sat down.
In the kitchen, directly behind Muntor, Rhoads’s head appeared, partially visible through one of the round windows in the swinging doors. Muntor couldn’t see him, but he must have noticed the movement of someone’s eyes to the window at his back.
By instinct, Muntor threw himself backward. The heavy door swung back violently and knocked Rhoads down onto the kitchen floor.
Muntor, weighted by all the equipment, came through the doors and stood over Rhoads. “I let go of this,” Muntor said, showing Rhoads the dead-man switch, “and everyone’s gone. Get out there. Damn it, Mr. Rhoads, I didn’t want you involved in this. You had a bigger role to play. But I suppose you’ve made your choice.”
Rhoads, stunned by the blow of the door, crawled into the ballroom. Mary rushed to him and knelt by his side.
Muntor performed a quick survey of the kitchen area and returned to the ballroom holding the dead-man switch high. He had been gone only five or six seconds. Everyone was still seated.
He stepped out and faced the people in the ballroom, moving along solid wall, keeping his back to it, moving away from the swinging doors. From his new position, as long as everyone remained seated, he could see all three chained exit doors, the kitchen doors, and the head table.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “There’s an excellent chance all of you, with one small exception, will be out of here in a few minutes. Out of here, alive and unharmed,” he added. “If… if Nick Pratt cooperates.”
On the other side of the room, Northrup whispered to Pratt. “Do as he says, Nick. He’s crazy. But I think he’s about to surrender. He just wants maximum attention.”
Muntor cleared his throat. “Nick Pratt will trade himself for the lives of every man and woman in this room. He’s going to stand up there at that table and smoke one of these.”
Muntor slipped the orchard-fogger’s trigger nozzle into one of the fireman uniform’s giant pockets and produced a pack of Easy Lights. He waved them around for show before putting them back in his pocket. Muntor’s upright arm ached. He carefully transferred the dead-man switch from one hand to other, keeping steady thumb pressure on the black button, and raised it, this time only for a moment, for all to see. Its function was now well known, and he no longer needed to keep it elevated.
Muntor, remembering the cameraman, turned to him and pointed. “Are you still getting all this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How soon until you run out of tape?”
The man looked at the back of the camera. “I’ve got five minutes and thirty-three seconds.”
“More than enough,” Muntor said. “More than enough.”
The room was deadly silent save for Muntor’s wheezing. He advanced slowly toward Pratt.
“An eye for an eye, Pratt,” Muntor said. He used his other hand to show the pack of cigarettes again. “I’m dying of cancer and emphysema, but I’ve never smoked a day in my life. You have spent your life selling this poison, and you’re going to reap what you’ve sown. The body is a temple, and you’ve desecrated it by the millions.”
Pratt, a third of the room’s span away, took a step back from the podium, shaking his head “no.” A collective shudder rolled through the room.
“Come on, Pratt,” Muntor’s voice creaked.
“No!” Pratt said. He took half a step behind Arnold Northrup.
“Come on, Pratt. You light up, and I’ll surrender. I’ll surrender over your dead body.” There was no humor in the remark.
Pratt took another step backward. “No! No! No!”
“Come on, Pratt. You light up, and I let everyone go. Shall I ask the crowd what they want? Because before the tape runs out, we’re settling this. One way or another.”
“Martin Muntor, sir,” the FBI agent said, standing again, hands raised. “Let me use the house phone to tell my people what’s happening. They don’t know about the dead-man control, and… and it might be better if they did.”
That made sense to Muntor. He dropped the cigarettes back into a pocket and took hold of the orchard-fogger’s trigger.
“Good. Use that phone there,” he said, using the nozzle to point to a telephone on a wall by the coffee service area. “First, take off your jacket. Do everything slowly, except when you get to that telephone. Then you’ve got thirty seconds. When you’re finished, pull the phone out of the wall. Remember this: I’m already dead, so play it smart and these people here may live. Go now.”
The FBI agent did as Muntor instructed. When he got to the telephone, Muntor glanced at a wall clock and shouted a reminder to the agent that he had no more than thirty seconds. The agent dialed a number.
No one except the agent moved or spoke until Muntor told him his time was up. The FBI agent disconnected. Then, with one swift punch with the heel of his hand, he knocked the telephone off of the wall and sent it crashing to the floor before returning to his seat.
“How much time, cameraman?” Muntor asked.
“Four minutes, ten seconds.”
125
“Hello, Martin, I’m coming out through here.”
Muntor jerked his body around toward the sound coming from the kitchen. He raised the nozzle toward the sound.
“I’m unarmed,” said Dr. Trice. “I’m an old lady back here in food prep. I’m coming out. Don’t hurt me.”
Muntor looked toward the slowly opening doors and the short, heavy woman who came through. That she knew his name seemed natural to him. In his delusion of grandeur, he presumed everyone now knew of Martin Muntor. She stood no more than ten feet away, looking directly at him. Her calm demeanor confused him. He thrust the dead-man switch toward her threateningly. She half-raised her hands and then dropped them to her side.
“Who are you?” Muntor asked. Without waiting for a reply, he said, “Take a seat. Take any seat, now.”
“Martin. I’m Dr. Trice.” She looked at his eyes in the shadow of the faceplate. Dull and wet. His respiration was rapid and shallow.
Rhoads spoke from the floor. Mary cradled him in her arms, the bloody cloth pressed against his head. “Bea, please. Sit down like he says. That switch in his hand can blow the place up. Let the professionals handle this.”
Dr. Trice looked away from Rhoads. She looked at Muntor.
“Look, Martin,” she said. She hadn’t moved an inch toward a seat. “I heard what you said to Pratt, and he deserves to die that way. But I’ve got something better for you.”
“Please take a seat, lady,” Muntor said. “I’m too tired to tell you again.”
She pointed a finger up at him. “Look, Martin,” she said, eyeing the tank strapped on his back. “I imagine you have the equipment necessary to kill Pratt and anyone else in this room. But if you want to make more of an impact on the world, you want to hear me out.”
“Three minutes, thirty seconds!” the cameraman shouted, an edge of hysteria in his voice.
“Please shut up, lady,” said Muntor.
“Martin, listen,” Dr. Trice continued. “Turn off that switch. Surrender. Make sure the one and a half billion dollars gets to where it’s supposed to go. You said you want a public-awareness campaign. This is the greatest one in history. You kill Pratt, and no money gets transferred. You kill Pratt and all of us, in six months, maybe a year, maybe even two, after they’ve made the movie and A&E or HBO does an hour-long biography on you and five or six jerks write instant books about you, it’ll all fade into oblivion. The tobacco industry will still be here, people will still be dying of lung cancer and heart disease and having low birth-weight babies.
“But, you let Pratt live? Every time he shows his face, they’ll remember today and what you did. Every time people see the Old Carolina logo or Old Carolina cigarettes, they’ll think about Martin Muntor and Virgil and what you did and the money you squeezed out of them for medical research. You kill everyone, and you go down as just another pathetic lunatic seeking a moment of glory. You surrender now, you’ll have a story a thousand times better than if everyone perishes.”
Muntor looked at a wall clock and then at the cameraman. “How much?”
The cameraman sobbed. “Two minutes, twenty seconds. Oh, God, please, God.”
“I’ve already killed hundreds,” Muntor said to Dr. Trice. “I’m already that dismissible pathetic lunatic.”
“No! It’s not so.” Her face grew red. “You surrender now, and the money transfer changes everything. You’ve accomplished something. You’ve accomplished something positive. As you said in one of your calls to the FBI, ‘I’m going to accomplish something of value before I die.’ Who among us can say that? Very few of us can say that, Martin. Distinguish yourself. You said the body is a temple. You want others to treat their bodies with love and respect. And their minds, too. This is the lesson you’ve been trying to teach. But who will hear it if you kill more innocents?”
Muntor thought. He bit at his lower lip.
He looked across the room at Pratt who had backed himself into a corner by the coffee service table and a towering dieffenbachia. Pratt’s shoulders pressed against the white wall. He shivered.
Muntor took a step toward him. A tiny squeak came out of Pratt’s mouth. Muntor took several more steps in that direction and stopped just as he stood over Rhoads and Mary on the floor. He looked down.
“Nice try in Princeton, Mr. Rhoads,” he said. Before Rhoads could speak, Muntor moved forward, advancing toward Pratt.
The room was as quiet as heavy snow falling in the woods. He stopped three feet from the quaking CEO. He to
ok the long nozzle from his pocket and wrapped his index finger around the trigger. He raised it and moved it up, very slowly, to Pratt’s face.
“Oh, Lord,” Pratt said, arms folded across his chest. He tried to step backward, but he was already as far as he could go. He shook.
Muntor didn’t turn his head from Pratt but shouted to the cameraman, “How much time?” He tightened his grip on the dead-man switch.
“Fifty-five seconds,” the voice said, barely audible to Muntor under the helmet. Muntor withdrew the pack of Easy Lights from a pocket. It was difficult to do with one hand, but he succeeded in removing a single cigarette from the pack. He put it between his lips and held it there. With his free hand, he removed his helmet and gas mask. Muntor dropped them. Pratt flinched at the sound.
Muntor’s hair had matted under the helmet, and a clump stuck straight up. Perspiration beaded his forehead and soaked the back of his neck. “Fifty-five seconds, Pratt?” Muntor spoke softly. This was just between them. “Not a lot of time to make such an important decision. You want this?” Muntor said, wiggling the cigarette tauntingly between his teeth. “Or this?” He moved the nozzle in closer, pressing its gunmetal lip painfully against Pratt’s mouth. “Cancer really hurts, Pratt. Tumors are painful. Like a hand in there that knows how to grab a fistful of nerves. It squeezes and squeezes till you go out of your mind.”
Pratt’s legs gave out from under him. He sank back against the wall and slid down, slowly, to the floor. He sobbed.
“Oh no, please. You’ve made your point, sir. Haven’t you cost me enough already? Please. No.”
Muntor made a half-turn and positioned himself so that no one else in the auditorium could see him drop the dead-man switch into his pocket. He crouched down and took Pratt by his hair, forcing him to look up. Pratt squealed and threw his hands up to protect himself. They were close enough to feel the heat of each other’s breath. The people seated at nearby tables screamed when Muntor leaned in. It seemed he was killing Pratt.
Find Virgil (A Novel of Revenge) Page 30