“Wait,” Layne said. “Are you sidelining us?”
Mason had sensed that something along those lines was about to transpire the moment the DHS agents had pulled up in their SUVs outside the Mayfair Towers.
“I’ve requested that you remain on standby for operational support,” Algren said.
“What about you?” Layne asked.
“My position will be integrated into the existing infrastructure of the counterterrorism network.”
“So we get screwed and you get a promotion?”
“We need our most experienced and capable agents on point,” Marchment said. “So as of this moment, the Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Unit, under the stewardship of the Department of Homeland Security, has assumed jurisdiction over this case, effectively disbanding this strike force. We ask that you turn over any and all pertinent materials and data, desist from further investigation, and sever all current lines of inquiry.”
Mason turned his stare upon Marchment.
“Is it the Novichok that’s the greatest threat to national security?” he asked. “Or is it the Scarecrow himself?”
The deputy secretary’s eyes widened ever so slightly at the mention of the Scarecrow.
“I am no longer at liberty to discuss the details of this case with you, Special Agent Mason. And considering the nature and severity of the threat, each of you will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement and you will be expected to uphold the status of your station by denying any knowledge of this investigation or disclosing any information even peripherally related to it, under penalty of law.”
“So what are we supposed to do now?” Becker asked.
“That’s no longer within my purview, Agent Becker,” Marchment said. “Agent Addison will lead you down the hall to secure offices, where a team of specialists will conduct your debriefings. You are dismissed.”
He turned without another word and headed out the door, leaving Algren scrambling to catch up with him. The moment it closed behind them, Layne slammed her fist on the table.
Addison assumed the head of the table and offered a smile that looked as uncomfortable on her face as it made the rest of them feel.
“Now, if you’ll come with me…”
“Screw this,” Layne said.
Addison opened the door for them and stepped to the side. Mason exited the conference room and glanced down the hallway to his right, where several DHS agents were already waiting for them with digital clipboards held to their chests.
Hopefully, this would be a relatively quick and painless process, because he really needed to get back to work.
A chiming sound behind him announced the arrival of the elevator.
He turned around in time to see Marchment enter the elevator. The deputy secretary looked up and their eyes met across the distance.
Mason held his stare until the doors closed between them.
Something clicked inside him, like a puzzle piece snapping into place.
He suddenly understood why the DHS had been hovering over the investigation from the start, why the hazmat team had been so quick to arrive at the slaughterhouse, why the FPS contingent on their strike force had interceded to prevent the release of the autopsy reports of the men in the cornfield and the personnel list from the army, and why the number-two man in the entire Homeland Security apparatus had been on-site, in the middle of the night, mere hours after the discovery of the victim in Central Park. He should have recognized it the moment he noticed that Algren had taken the time to change her clothes and freshen her makeup. Marchment must have contacted her sometime between their last briefing and her arrival, made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and used her ambition to effectively usurp the investigation and hide it behind the veil of national security.
One piece after another tumbled into place.
Marchment had been placed in charge of the Bradley Strike Force to make sure the investigation into the Hoyl focused on the drugs being smuggled through the open desert and not on the virus. He’d brought in Spencer Kane so he had a man he trusted on the inside, one who would keep him informed, shape the course of the investigation, and lead them all to their deaths if they got too close to the truth. And when it was all over, after the Hoyl had escaped with the virus and the strike force had been eradicated, he’d flown to Arizona to personally control the flow of information. He’d sat mere feet from Mason’s hospital bed and shared the details of the deaths of his colleagues without so much as hinting that he’d been the one who betrayed them.
Now here he was again, directing his agency to make sure no one got too close to the Scarecrow, using the might of his position to enact the genocidal plans of the same men who’d tried to cull the global population with their flu virus, men with enough power and political currency to arrange for his appointment to one of the highest positions within the national security apparatus and use him to derail the investigation into their plot to release a chemical weapon of mass destruction. And through him, they now controlled a quarter of a million highly trained law-enforcement officers, a veritable army already assembled in every state of the union and along every physical border.
He could see it all so clearly now.
Rand Marchment was an agent of the Thirteen.
39
ELSEWHERE
The Scarecrow watched the jagged lines streak across the monitor, the peaks growing farther apart even as they diminished in amplitude. A high-pitched alarm erupted from it, but the Scarecrow pressed the button to silence it, leaving the warning light flashing impotently. The equipment was no longer strictly necessary, as there was no mistaking the direness of the situation. The blankets hardly rose with each labored inhalation, and the unmistakable stench of death was a physical entity stalking the room, like the grim reaper himself.
“Just … a … little … longer,” the Scarecrow whispered.
It drew a cold hand from beneath the covers and kissed it with lips that had not known human contact in as long as it could remember. It was surprised to feel the warmth of a single tear trickling down its cheek, and not simply for the lack of emotions it felt.
The Scarecrow carefully tucked the hand back underneath the sheet and ran its fingertips along the contours of a face it knew nearly as well as its own, or at least once had, before the life had dissolved beneath the skin, transforming the features into a skeletal mockery of the formerly radiant being. It tried not to think about how the eyes had begun to sink into the skull or that the mouth no longer appeared capable of closing. All that remained now was inevitability, the inevitability of victory and loss, vindication and vengeance, triumph and tragedy.
Death.
“The … bogeyman … has … come,” it rasped. “His … master … cannot … be … far … behind.”
Whether real or imagined, the Scarecrow sensed the hint of a smile tug at the corners of those waxen lips and rose from the bedside. There was still much work to be done and it was imperative that everything stayed on schedule, especially if it intended to separate the monster it had always thought of as the bogeyman from his security contingent. His role in the final act was the most important of all, for it was through his suffering that the Scarecrow would enact the final phase of the plan it had devised with its true master, a plan that would see the deaths of millions and expose all of those responsible for a lifetime of pain and misery.
It passed several rooms enclosed by walls made of rice paper before entering one filled with the bluish glow emanating from the aquarium housing the jellyfish, which floated inside like gobs of mucus. Unseen creatures scurried inside their tanks, snakes slithered across the detritus lining their cages, and insects tapped against the sides of their enclosures. It knelt before one in particular and tapped the glass, eliciting a frenetic buzzing sound.
“Your … time … has … come.”
The final countdown would soon commence.
Three would become two, who would know the fear it had once felt and e
xperience pain beyond anything they had ever known, before only one remained. One who, with his final breaths, would understand exactly what he had done, that he would die with countless others, no better or worse, and that the name he cared so much about would be worth less than nothing, his legacy defined by his atrocities.
And when the timer hit zero, everyone would finally see the Scarecrow—truly see it for the first time—and recognize the role they had played in the massacre.
40
Mason awoke with a start. Something had roused him from a dead slumber. It took him a moment to identify his surroundings. The clock on the dresser read 5:16 P.M. in glowing red numbers. A faint aura of light filtered through the drawn curtains, defining the radiator below them and the nearby table and chair, upon which rested his overnight bag. He heard car horns in the distance and the din of life on the street below. A dull ache spread throughout his body, radiating from the puncture wounds he’d received from the IED on the eastern plains of Colorado, the knot at the base of his skull he’d incurred while being hunted through the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, and the bruises covering his back and shoulders from being hurled off the top of a thirty-six-story building in New York City.
By the time he and Layne had finished their debriefings, the adrenaline that had sustained them since leaving Colorado had worked its way through their systems and exhaustion had set in with a vengeance. He remembered finding her asleep in a chair in the hallway of the federal building, driving them both back to the hotel through brutal midday traffic, and riding the elevator together to their rooms on the tenth floor, where they’d agreed that a few hours of sleep would do them both some good. They needed to remain as sharp as possible, both mentally and physically, in case Algren called in operational support. Of course, Mason knew that Layne had no more intention of sitting around and waiting for that to happen than he did, but if there was one lesson he’d learned from experience, it was that he should rest when he had the opportunity to do so, because there was no telling when he might get another chance, especially if things were about to start moving as quickly as he anticipated.
He was debating sneaking in a few more minutes of shuteye when he heard something outside his door, a sound that triggered his internal alarm system: the subtle creak of footsteps in the hallway.
Suddenly wide-awake, he slid out of bed in just his boxers, grabbed his Glock from the nightstand, and ran across the room. Pressed his back against the wall beside the door. Slowed his breathing and listened. No squeaking of wheels from a housekeeper’s cart or the hinges from the door of a nearby room.
Something bumped against the other side of the wall.
There was definitely someone out there, someone who had no business being there.
More creaking.
A shadow passed across the faint line of light passing underneath the door.
Mason gripped the handle in his left hand. A quick twist and a tug and the door would be open. Whoever was on the other side wouldn’t be expecting it. He’d come around the door low, using it to shield his body, and—
An electronic beep from the other side, followed by the click of the disengaging lock.
The door opened inward.
A rectangle of light spread across the floor and onto the rumpled bed. Two overlapping shadows nearly eclipsed it. Movement through the crack near the hinges.
They were coming in.
The moment they cleared the door, Mason shouldered it closed and stepped behind the second man. Grabbed him by the back of his jacket. Ducked behind his shoulder. Jammed the barrel of the pistol into the base of his skull.
“Jesus,” the second man gasped.
The first stood silhouetted against the rear wall. He turned around. There was something in his right hand, something Mason couldn’t immediately identify.
“I don’t care if you shoot him,” the man said, “but for the love of God, put on some damn clothes.”
Mason jerked the second man backward so he could reach the light switch with his elbow. The recessed bulbs filled the room with a hard yellow glare. Ramses stood at the foot of the bed with a paper cup of coffee in his hand.
“Why the hell didn’t you just knock?” Mason asked. “I could have killed you both.”
Gunnar raised his arms just high enough that Mason could see that he held a cup in either hand. The coffee had splashed out of the small holes and covered both the lids and the backs of his hands.
Mason lowered his weapon, released Gunnar’s jacket, and smoothed the fabric.
His old friend turned around and offered the cup in his left hand.
“You didn’t reply to any of our messages,” Ramses said. “What were we supposed to do?”
“Only you would go straight to breaking and entering,” Mason said.
He set down his coffee on the table, dumped out the contents of his bag, and put on a clean T-shirt and jeans.
“What can I say? I’m a man of action.”
“Let’s just hope those actions don’t get you killed,” Mason said. He sat on the edge of the bed to put on his boots and sipped the hot coffee. “Why are you even here?”
“You said things were about to get interesting,” Gunnar said. “We didn’t want to miss any of the fun.”
Mason smirked.
“I wouldn’t dream of starting it without you,” he said. “Have you found anything on Nakamura?”
“These things take time. Especially when someone’s gone to great lengths to scrub the Internet of any mention of him. Trust me, though … if there’s anything out there, I’ll find it.”
Ramses paced the room, an expression of revulsion on his face. He opened the curtains to expose the view of the building next door, the bricks of which were so close, he could have reached out and touched them, had he been able to open the window.
“The FBI must really hate you to put you up in a place like this,” he said. “I don’t even want to sit down, for fear my ass will come away sticky.”
“Where’s Alejandra?” Mason asked.
“Are you seriously asking why someone in the country illegally and without any form of identification didn’t travel with us through an airport to the city with the most police officers while it’s on heightened terrorism alert?”
“It couldn’t have worked out better,” Gunnar said. “Less than twenty minutes after we left, our anonymous friend circumvented my firewall again, which you’d already know if you’d bothered to check your messages.”
“What’d he say?”
“He was fishing for what we knew about what happened here in the city.”
Mason furrowed his brow as comprehension dawned.
“This guy’s on the inside,” he said. “As far as anyone outside the investigation knows, Central Park was closed for a red team training exercise and the explosion at the Mayfair Towers was accidental and unrelated.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Gunnar said. “He has to be wired into the national counterterrorism network to know as much as he does about FEMA’s emergency activation levels and the JTTF’s response to last night’s events.”
“So what did Alejandra tell him?”
“That we didn’t know anything about it,” Ramses said, “which is more or less true.”
“He suggested we look into the supposedly coincidental explosion,” Gunnar said, “which brings us to Charles Raymond, who, at the time of his death, was the managing director of Research and Development for Royal Nautilus Petroleum, the sixth most powerful position in the corporate hierarchy. He was hired straight out of grad school and worked in the exploration sector for a short period of time before being transferred to R and D, where he remained for the duration of his career. While his role on the executive council was likely more ceremonial than managerial, he wasn’t so far removed from his department that he didn’t still have his fingerprints on most of their active projects, including the development of liquid natural gas as a transport fuel, carbon-neutral production facilities, and green constru
ction materials.”
“Sounds more like an environmentalist than an oil company executive,” Ramses said.
Mason finished his coffee, tossed the cup into the miniature wastebasket, and took a seat at the table.
“What about military service?” he asked.
“As a student, he received a draft deferment,” Gunnar said.
“Anything related to chemical manufacturing or engineering? He had to understand what the Scarecrow had done to him and recognize the symptoms.”
“In one way or another, everything he did was related to chemical engineering. He signed on at a time when oil was the only game in town and had to continually pioneer new technologies to keep up with the demands of an ever-changing world.”
“What about Royal Nautilus itself?”
“It’s the largest energy exploration company in the world, with annual revenue in the hundreds of billions and operations in nearly every country,” Gunnar said. “Between oil and liquid natural gas, it produces nearly four million barrels of oil equivalent every day. As far as corporations go, it’s somewhat sprawling and unwieldy, with countless subsidiaries and joint ventures in just about every industry even peripherally related to the energy sector, specifically those that fit into its four business groupings: the upstream search for and recovery of crude oil; the downstream refining and shipping of by-products; the integration of new energies and low-carbon opportunities; and the research and development of new products and technologies, which also encompasses chemicals and biologicals.”
“Biologicals?” Mason said. “You mean like the kind of bacteria they use to clean up oil spills and the Hoyl integrated into his flu virus as a decomposition agent?”
The Annihilation Protocol Page 23