by John Lutz
Harper dropped into a football linesman’s crouch and tried to drive right through them.
The older cop grunted and gave way, but the younger one wrapped his arms around Harper and held on. Harper staggered on another pace before dropping to his knees. The older cop jumped on top of him and all three went down.
As he rolled and wriggled and strained to get to his feet, Harper could hear the gasps and exclamations of the people around him. There were shouts and the pounding of feet as more cops and guards converged on them. Harper struggled on, but it was no use. Within moments he was belly-down on the asphalt. His arms were pulled up onto his back and he felt the metal rings slide onto his wrists and heard the snick of the locks.
The weight on his back lessened. Several pairs of hands lifted him and set him on his feet. As his head came up, he saw the glassy eyes of dozens of lenses pointed at him, and heard the ratcheting of camera motor drives. The reporters had arrived. He’d never been so glad to see them.
“Hey—that’s Harper!” someone shouted.
“What are you doing to Harper?”
“Who ordered Harper’s arrest?”
“Harper—do you believe there’s a bomb—”
A man loomed up between Harper and the reporters. In a low and urgent voice, he said to the cops who were holding Harper’s arms, “Get him in the car—right now.”
The man stayed right next to Harper as they hustled him along. The blue suit and the grim expression on the clean-cut features tipped him off even before he saw the FBI creds dangling from the man’s neck. This guy had been sent by Frances to prevent Harper from embarrassing her. He’d get Harper off the scene or die trying.
Harper tried dragging his feet. No use: He was lifted up and carried. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the photographers and reporters still keeping pace. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once.
“What’s the charge against this man, Officer?”
“Harper, what’d you do?”
“Is there a bomb in the hospital?”
“Is Delilah the target?”
Harper turned his head and said to the FBI man, “I want to talk to Delilah.”
The agent gave a tight smile of disgust. “No chance.”
“Then I’ll start talking to these guys.”
“Don’t try it, asshole.”
“You take me to Delilah or you’re gonna have a panic on your hands.”
The agent’s hand darted under his coat and came out holding a can of pepper spray. He pointed the nozzle at Harper’s face. Harper clenched his eyes shut and tried to turn away, knowing it was hopeless, knowing that in a split second the spray was going to render him mute and helpless.
“You can’t do that!” shouted a new voice. “Not in front of the cameras!”
He opened his eyes to see a chunky woman in a police sergeant’s uniform. She was standing in front of him, her hand grasping the arm of the FBI agent. He was cursing at her. By now the media people had closed the ring in front of them. Camera lenses covered every angle. Shouted questions were coming from all sides.
Abruptly a tall bald man appeared in front of Harper. It was Bobs. He said, with great aplomb, “Delilah will see Mr. Harper.
“No, she won’t,” said the FBI man.
“I talk to her or I talk to them,” Harper said, nodding toward the reporters.
“Take him to the limo,” the sergeant ordered, tucking her thumbs in her belt.
Harper’s feet were allowed to settle on the ground. The hands that had been holding his biceps in a viselike grip let go. The party began to make its way back through the crowd to the limousine. The reporters continued to shout questions. They’d started calling Harper Will, now, as if that would make a difference. The agent, in a soft, bitter voice, was telling the sergeant she was making a big mistake and that this was the end of her career. The sergeant seemed unperturbed.
A security man opened the limo’s rear door as they approached. Bowing his head the way he’d seen so many suspects do, Harper clambered in. The door slammed shut behind him. He found a jump seat to perch on and turned to face Delilah.
She was alone on the spacious backseat. She was wearing a tailored suit that was a bright yet delicate shade of pink that he’d seen before only in azalea blossoms. Every hair was in place. There seemed to be four or five different shades of makeup on her upper eyelids. Harper had never seen anyone in real life look so perfect. He stared at her as if she were a holograph.
She said, “You asshole, Harper.”
He sat blinking at her. The tone of voice left no doubt that she was furious at him, but there was no sign of it in her face. She looked calm and composed. Only now did Harper realize that the photographers were moving to surround the car. Camera lenses peered in at every window. He didn’t know how much they could get through the tinted glass, but they weren’t going to get a close-up of Delilah raging at Harper. She’d been playing the game for years and was too smart for them.
“You set out to ruin my visit, didn’t you?” she went on. “You think there’s nothing for it now but for me to turn around and go home.”
“No, I—”
“Well, I won’t let you stop me. The children are waiting and I won’t disappoint them. I’m going in there.”
“There is a bomb in the hospital.”
She gazed at him expressionlessly. “Agent Wilson spent two hours with us after you left, Harper. She explained to us all about the DNA evidence. She had charts. Markman is dead.”
“Wilson is wrong, he’s alive.”
“And she explained why we shouldn’t listen to you. Bobs was convinced. And Nancy.”
“And you?” said Harper. “Were you convinced—completely convinced?”
She hesitated, but only for an instant. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t go into that hospital.”
“No, there isn’t,” Harper retorted. “Assuming you’re as crazy as the tabloids say. Assuming you’ve decided that being assassinated would be a good career move.”
The facade cracked. Delilah’s lips tightened and she glared at him. “How dare you say that to me?”
“If you want to die, fine. But for God’s sake don’t take all those children with you. You care about them—I know you do.”
Delilah looked down at her hands, which had remained demurely clasped in her pink lap throughout the interview. Harper held his breath. This was the moment. Either she was going to order him out or she was going to listen to him.
Excited shouting and the faint whirring of automatic-wind cameras came to them from beyond the bulletproof windows. The car rocked as a photographer tried to climb on the trunk and was dragged off by cops.
Delilah raised her eyes and met Harper’s. She smiled, the familiar wry half smile. “For your information, Harper, I don’t have a death wish.”
“Oh?”
“I hope to live a long time. I intend to be old, ugly, and beloved by everyone.”
Harper smiled back at her. Delilah, he thought, could teach the members of the NYPD Bomb Squad a thing or two about how to wait.
The moment passed. Delilah became grave. “I don’t know what to do. Of course I don’t want to put those children at risk, but I have no reason to believe you. The security experts have gone all over the hospital. I’ve been assured that there is no bomb.”
Harper said, “Let me go in there, Delilah. Wait here while I look around. If I don’t find anything, then you go ahead with your visit.”
Delilah locked gazes with him for another long moment. Then she nodded slightly.
“All right, Harper. It’s your show.”
44
When Harper got out of Delilah’s limo, the crowd seemed twice as large as when he’d gotten in. Looking over people’s heads, he could see up the access road to a traffic jam of police cars and Minicam vans that were trying to get to the scene. A helicopter came in low, heading for the landing pad on the hospital’s roof. A new patient, Harper wondered—or Agent Frances W
ilson, arriving to take personal charge of the situation?
Better get on with the search.
He fell in behind Bobs, ignoring the reporters who shouted his name and grabbed at him. Six cops in full riot gear had to link arms and form a wedge to push through the crowd and deliver them to the front steps of the hospital.
Two men were waiting for them near the front doors of the building. One was a small man with a lined brow, a neatly trimmed goatee, and a double-breasted suit. Bobs introduced him as Dr. Rosen, director of the hospital. He looked annoyed at having to talk to Harper, while the other man looked bored. This was Captain Alberghetti, a tall, narrow-shouldered man with coarse-pored skin, a receding chin, and salt-and-pepper hair, wearing the green fatigues of the U.S. Army. It was Alberghetti who’d run the search of the building, but Harper turned to Rosen first.
“Doctor, how difficult is it for an unauthorized person to gain entry?”
Rosen’s mouth was so tight he looked like a wooden marionette. “Not difficult enough to satisfy you, I’m sure.”
Bobs put in smoothly, “Doctor, if you would please cooperate with Mr. Harper—”
“We’ve been over this before,” grumbled Rosen. “There’s only so far I can go for you people. I can’t allow security to interfere with the running of my hospital.”
Harper figured he’d save further questions and assume that Markman would have had no trouble smuggling the bomb in and planting it wherever he wanted to. He turned to Alberghetti.
“Captain—”
“The building’s clean, Mr. Harper. I just finished my sweep.”
He seemed to think Harper ought to be satisfied with that. He was striking a John Wayne pose, with hands on his web belt and head tilted, for the cameras that were clicking behind Harper. It crossed Harper’s mind that Captain Alberghetti might be a lot like Captain Brand. He felt more skeptical about this sweep.
“How did you proceed, exactly?”
Alberghetti blinked and shrugged to indicate that he was bored rather than offended by the question. “We went over Delilah’s whole route. There is no bomb.”
“What technology did you use?”
“Everything in the truck,” said the Captain, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. At the side of the steps, soldiers in green were loading metal cases into the back of a truck. A German shepherd sat patiently next to his handler’s leg.
“This will go more quickly if you’ll answer Mr. Harper,” said Bobs.
Alberghetti didn’t glance at Bobs. “We used a fluoroscope and metal detector.”
Harper said, “Neither of those pick up plastic explosive, which our guy used on his last job.”
“We also used an Arleigh B-19 scanner.”
Harper had heard of this scanner. It picked up on materials of very high density and thus was able to detect plastic explosives. But the device was new and had some shortcomings.
“Those scanners are real heavy,” he said. “Have they developed a portable version I haven’t heard about?”
Alberghetti looked uneasily over Harper’s left shoulder, then his right. “This model has limited portability. We took it up in the elevator. Whatever object we wanted scanned, we brought to it.”
“How about objects that couldn’t be moved?”
“In that case we did visual inspection.”
“You looked at them, you mean. Suppose there was a plastique bomb concealed behind a wall, under a floor? You wouldn’t have found it.”
“Duke would have,” said Alberghetti, nodding at the German shepherd.
Harper nodded. He had a lot of respect for the nose of a well-trained explosive-sniffing dog. He looked at the German shepherd sitting beside his trainer at the bottom of the steps, patiently waiting to board the truck. “You took the dog all along the route?”
There was a pause before Alberghetti spoke that made Harper look back at him. He said, “Through all the public rooms, yes.” And then he looked at Rosen.
The little doctor threw his shoulders back and clasped his hands behind him. “Obviously I couldn’t permit a dog to be taken to the third-floor wards. We have very sick children up there. Very delicate equipment. A dog would be disruptive and unsanitary.”
Harper turned to Alberghetti. “Get Duke. We’re going to the third-floor wards.”
“Now, wait—” Rosen began.
“Sorry, Doctor,” Harper said. “We have to assume the bomber found out about your decision and exploited it.”
Alberghetti was walking down the steps toward his men. Duke had heard his name. He was already on his feet, his long tail swinging in slow arcs behind him. Harper wished Alberghetti and Rosen had had the same spirit of cooperation.
Rosen was arguing loudly. Harper decided to leave him to Bobs. He turned to look around. He’d sent somebody back to his car and hoped the person had returned.
She had. A Bethesda policewoman was standing just behind him with a box under her arm. She offered it to him. “Here you go, sir.”
“Thanks.”
Harper lifted the lid and pulled out the NYPD blast protection suit Brand had given him. As he put it on, he found that what Brand had said was true. This was a big improvement over earlier models. The last time Harper had put on a bomb suit was in the silent corridor of that Queens high school, with Jimmy Fahey at his side. Harper pushed the thought away.
Fastening the Velcro closure at his neck, he tucked the helmet under his arm and turned. Dr. Rosen was still arguing with Bobs. The veins in his temples stood out like cords. Alberghetti was coming up the steps along with the dog and his handler. “Let’s go,” he said to Harper. He said it loudly enough for the reporters to hear. He wanted them to assume he was in charge.
“You may want to put on some protection, Captain,” said Harper. “And bring along your tools.”
“I’ll call my people in—if we find anything,” Alberghetti said, with a hard, skeptical look. Harper figured that like Captain Brand, Alberghetti believed working on live bombs was a chore better left to his inferiors.
They pushed through the glass doors. Guards and receptionists and most of the clerical staff of the hospital were crowded around the front desk. Wide-eyed and unspeaking, they stared at the men and the dog as they walked past to the elevators. It was quiet enough to hear Duke’s toenails clicking on the tile floor.
They stepped into the elevator and Alberghetti pressed 3. Duke sat down. His brown eyes were shining with eagerness, but he wasn’t panting or wagging his tall. A well-trained dog, Harper thought. His handler, a freckle-faced corporal, looked much more excited.
The doors slid open, and they stepped out onto the most cheerfully decorated hospital ward Harper had ever seen, with a bright-blue carpet and long, multicolored arrowed stripes along the walls. The figures in scrub suits at the nurses’ stations looked up from their clipboards and computer screens with bleary eyes. It must be late in their shift, thought Harper. They looked as tired as Laura did when she got home. Evidently Bobs had persuaded Dr. Rosen to make a call, because no one questioned Harper and the others as they walked past.
“Let’s just walk Delilah’s route, slowly,” Harper said.
The corporal bent to murmur a command in the dog’s ear. He barely had time to grasp Duke’s harness before he was off down the corridor.
Harper dropped back until be was trailing the party. His mouth was dry, his heartbeat rapid. He scanned every inch of the corridor, but he knew he wasn’t going to spot anything. Markman hadn’t gotten this far by being careless. It was up to Duke.
Harper had read somewhere that a German shepherd’s sense of smell was a million times stronger than a man’s. A good thing, he thought, because he couldn’t smell anything but the faint tang of disinfectant.
Duke was moving in a purposeful zigzag across the corridor, nose to the carpet, when an olive-skinned, dark-eyed child appeared in a doorway. His head was shaved and he had a tracery of healing scars on his face and neck. He burst into a grin when be saw the dog an
d shouted something in a language Harper didn’t understand. Then he ran over to Duke and threw his arms around his neck.
The three men looked at each other helplessly. Even in the circumstances, it was more than any of them could do to separate boy and dog.
More children were appearing in other doorways. Confused, Duke sat down. Harper thought he should have been paying more attention when Rosen warned of the disruption Duke would cause. How long had it been since any of these kids had seen a dog?
The corridor was now full of pajama-clad children of all ages. It seemed that every patient on the floor who could walk—and a few who were in wbeelchairs—was surrounding the dog, jostling to get closer, talking excitedly in a mélange of languages. Many small hands, some of them missing fingers, stroked Duke’s luxuriant fur.
“We better break up the party, Captain,” the handler said, “or this dog won’t be fit for sniffing nothing.”
Already nurses and doctors were wading into the corridor to restore order. There were tears and wails as they were herded back to their rooms. An Indian doctor, wearing a white lab coat and a blue turban, approached Harper to upbraid him for the disruption. Harper listened and placated, all the time thinking of Delilah, trapped in her limousine downstairs and no doubt rapidly losing patience. And of Special Agent Wilson, who was surely on her way to the scene by the fastest means available.
And of the bomb.
Finally the corridor was cleared and Duke went back to work. His tongue was still hanging out, but he seemed to have recovered his concentration. He padded briskly along, quartering the corridor.
“Is Delilah supposed to tour the whole floor?” Harper asked.
“No,” Alberghetti replied. “She’s going to this lounge area around the corner. They’re planning to gather the children around her there.”
Harper nodded. “We’ll have to go over the lounge carefully. That could be the place.”
“Whatever you say,” said Alberghetti casually. He still thought this search was pointless, and nothing had happened so far to shake his aplomb.
They turned the corner onto another corridor with doors standing open on patients’ rooms to either side. In one doorway stood a cardiac monitor, angled so that doctors and nurses passing in the corridor could check the heartbeat of the patient at a glance. The soft, regular beeping of the monitor was the only noise. At the end of the corridor, through open glass doors, was the lounge, a cheerful place with children’s paintings on the walls. There were colored pillows, books, and toys scattered on the floor.