“Climb in, friend. You’ve done a great thing today. Mullah will be very, very proud of you.”
Farhoud helped the slight young sharpshooter into the boat. Chaim had grown stiff and weak during his hours on the bay, and Farhoud had to heft him into the boat while taking care not to capsize.
Once aboard, Chaim hugged him tightly, crying with nerves and exhaustion. “They will find us, Farhoud. The backpack. . .”
“Let us not worry, friend. Mullah has taken precautions.”
35
VA Hospital, Washington DC. Friday, 11:53 p.m. ET.
The ringing telephone in Senator Frank Higgs’s hospital room awoke him from his deep, exhausted sleep. He had incorporated the first few rings into a dream he was having, but the phone’s loud insistence had finally roused him.
He had no idea how many times it had rung. The FBI guy had left minutes ago, he thought, but a glance at the clock told him otherwise. Almost midnight.
He groggily reached for the receiver with his uninjured arm. “You forgot about our meeting,” the Intermediary’s familiar, flat voice said without preamble.
The senator’s heart rate jumped, and his grogginess left in an instant. “Should I send a note from my doctor? What the hell do you think I’ve been doing?” Higgs tightened his grip on the phone. “Why don’t you just stop by, then? You obviously know where I am. We’ll chat right here.”
“Things have changed a bit, I’m afraid,” the caller said, ignoring Higgs’s sarcasm. “Please make yourself available. I’ll be in touch.”
The line went dead.
“Asshole.” He felt better saying it, though no one heard the words. I need better friends. And some sleep.
Both would be hard to come by, he suspected. He gathered his belongings, called for a cab using the hospital phone in his room, and walked slowly toward the admissions desk.
It had all the makings of a long night.
Against the advice of the admissions nurse, Frank Higgs checked out of the hospital at a little after midnight. He wore his suit slacks beneath a hospital gown. His shirt had been ruined by blood, his own and Ian Banes’s.
He walked through the front doors of the hospital. There was no taxi waiting for him, but he immediately spotted a late-model sedan with its headlights on.
It began making its way around the entrance drive, directly toward him.
He had no idea why, but a panicked feeling suddenly rose in his stomach. He froze.
Then he turned abruptly and went back into the hospital.
He looked over his shoulder and saw the sedan come to a stop in front of the entrance. The passenger door opened and a man in a suit got out of the car. The man walked quickly in Higgs’s direction.
“Senator, we’re here to pick you up, sir.”
Something felt wrong. Paranoia? Maybe. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, Higgs thought. Someone had already tried to kill him once today.
“Senator, for your safety, sir, please get in the car.”
It didn’t feel right.
Higgs ran.
“Is everything all right, Senator?” the admissions nurse asked. “Senator, you can’t go back there. Senator!”
Higgs ducked into a doorway marked “Staff Only.” The door opened into the middle of a long corridor.
He checked the door for a lock, but didn’t find one.
He turned left toward the back of the hospital and continued running.
Higgs was already out of breath. Years of boozing, smoking, and sitting on his ass had done little for his cardiovascular health. He wasn’t going to win a footrace, and he had to get out of the long hallway as soon as possible. He would be spotted immediately as soon as the man in the suit made it through the lobby.
Higgs spotted an illuminated exit sign. He heard the clamor of raised voices and running footsteps in the lobby behind him. Never going to make it.
Just as Higgs reached the door beneath the exit sign, the lobby door burst back open. “Senator, wait! We’re here for your safety!”
Higgs hesitated for a second.
Could they really be here to protect him? Could Banes’s friend Paul have sent them? Or his own staff? Or the local cops?
Any of those people would have told me they were sending someone.
He trusted his instincts, and ran harder toward the exit sign.
“Senator, wait, it’s not safe!” The man was gaining on him. Higgs cursed his momentary hesitation.
The senator burst through the exit door, finding himself in a stairwell. Down would be the faster choice, which made it the obvious choice. Instead, he ran up the flight of stairs.
He heard the man’s voice and footfalls in the hallway he had just left, still shouting at him to stop running.
He bound up the stairs two at a time. Three would have been better, but Higgs was no athlete and he couldn’t risk a fall.
He charged through the doorway on the next floor up, hoping his pursuer hadn’t heard which direction he went.
Legs and lungs burning, Higgs made his way down the hallway toward the back end of the hospital. He saw another exit sign and angled toward the door beneath it.
It opened before he got there. Another man in a suit. The sedan’s driver?
Higgs dashed toward a hospital room, pushed open the wide, heavy door. He tried to slam it shut behind him, but the door was slowed by a pneumatic hinge. Higgs threw his full weight against the door, feet slipping on the smooth tile floor.
Footsteps charged down the hallway.
The door finally shut.
Higgs turned the deadbolt just as his pursuer reached the hospital room door. He saw the man through the small window above the door handle.
Lips curled in a snarl, the pursuer rammed his shoulder into the door, but the lock held fast.
Sonuvabitch, this is no rescue, Higgs thought.
A loud wail from behind him caused him to jump.
He turned to see a frightened woman sitting up in her hospital bed, covers drawn around her, yelling loudly for him to leave her alone.
Higgs ran to the far side of the bed, opened the window curtains, and picked up a chair.
He heard a loud noise behind him. The man was pounding something hard and metallic against the small windowpane in the hospital room door.
A gun.
The window in the door shattered.
Higgs smashed the chair into the large hospital room window with all the strength he could muster. The chair bounced off the sturdy glass and clattered noisily on the floor. A spider web of lines appeared in the large window, but it didn’t break.
He looked behind him to see a silenced pistol protruding through the shattered glass of the small window in the door.
He dove to the floor, cracking his knee on the hard tile. He heard the distinctive sound of a silenced gunshot. A bullet penetrated the glass window behind him.
More screams from the woman in the hospital bed.
Higgs peered from around the bed. The shooter had removed the pistol from his hand and was now fumbling for the deadbolt on the inside of the hospital room door.
Higgs leapt to his feet and dashed for the door as fast as his rubbery legs would carry him. He saw the man’s hand find and turn the deadbolt, then begin to retreat through the broken window.
Higgs reached the assailant’s hand. He grabbed the man’s arm and pulled with all of his might, jerking it back through the broken window.
He hooked both elbows over the man’s forearm, then jumped to the floor, throwing his full weight against the man’s arm, which was now trapped against the bottom of the window opening.
He heard a loud pop and an agonized howl. The man’s elbow bent a very long way in the wrong direction.
The pursuer’s body weight fell against the door, which opened inward a few inches into the room. Higgs wrapped both hands around the door edge and ripped it open with as much force as possible, doing more damage to the man’s broken a
rm.
His attacker staggered backward, clutching his ruined elbow. Higgs kicked him hard in the groin. The man collapsed to the floor.
Higgs took a step forward into the hallway and stomped on his attacker’s other hand, which was still curled around the pistol.
Higgs felt bones crunch beneath his heel, and heard another cry of agony. He ground his heel into the attacker’s hand, then stooped down to wrestle the gun free of the man’s mangled fingers.
Senator Frank Higgs took two steps away from the writhing man, weighing his options.
There weren’t many, he concluded.
He aimed and fired. Then fired again. Two rounds to the chest. The attacker slumped to the floor.
The woman in the hospital bed screamed again.
Before he could turn to yell at her to shut up, Higgs saw the stairwell doorway burst open out in the hall. The other suit, the one who had tried to coax him into the car out in front of the hospital just minutes before, charged through the open door.
Higgs shot and missed. The man threw himself on the hospital floor and reached into his jacket to retrieve his pistol.
Higgs shot twice more as he ran back into the hospital room, missing wildly. He ran behind the bed with the hysterical woman. “Shh!” he hissed.
He picked up the chair and pounded it into the spidered glass with all his might. The window shattered.
Higgs prepared to jump out the second-floor window and into the warm, muggy night. But he thought better of it at the last instant.
Instead of jumping, he crouched down to hide behind the bed, training the pistol at the doorway. Come on, asshole.
He heard footsteps approaching fast from the hallway. The remaining attacker rounded the corner into the hospital room at a run, expecting to find his quarry fleeing on the grass below.
The man’s eyes registered surprise as Higgs’s first shot caught him in the stomach. The second slug hit him in the neck. He fell to the floor with a thud.
Higgs heard a sickening gurgle from the man’s throat. He ran to the dying attacker, grabbed the man’s pistol, then ran out into the hallway and veered toward the stairwell. The woman’s wails receded behind him.
Higgs bounded down the stairs, almost falling, then recovered as his feet hit the landing. He ran all the way down to the emergency exit one half-floor beneath the hospital’s main hallway.
The alarm sounded as Higgs threw his weight against the exit. He dashed on shaky legs into the muggy darkness.
Heart pounding and head swimming, he headed for the patch of forest in the greenbelt across the street from the hospital.
36
Alexandria, VA. Saturday, 12:26 a.m. ET.
Sam awoke to the sound of her work phone clattering on the nightstand. The clock read 12:26 a.m. Brock stirred next to her as she fumbled to find the phone.
The bright screen hurt her eyes, and she squinted to make out the caller’s name: Alfonse Archer, FBI. She sighed, then answered.
Archer apologized for the hour. “No worries, Big-A, what’s up?” She sat up as she spoke.
She listened for a long moment. “Goodness,” she finally said. “OK, I’ll join the fun. See you in a few.” She rubbed her eyes, then stood to get dressed.
“Out for some Friday night entertainment?” Brock asked.
“Killer party at the VA hospital, apparently.”
“You should hire a lackey for the night shift.” He rolled over and readjusted the covers.
“And miss all the excitement?” She found yesterday’s underwear and bra on the floor and decided they were clean enough. “Looks like our favorite senator turned ninja on a couple of thugs. The man has skills, apparently.”
“The same senator from earlier?”
“Yup. Busy day. Must be taking his vitamins.”
She circled the bed to give him a kiss. “Bye, baby. Sleep tight. I’ll be back soon.”
37
Washington, DC. Saturday, 12:52 a.m. ET.
Higgs was in fairly deep shit.
He had hidden in the trees and bushes of the greenbelt for a while, then realized that it was only a matter of time before they brought dogs to search for him.
He crashed and flailed through the dense foliage across from the hospital until he came to a jogging path. It was surrounded by trees on both sides, and ran adjacent to a small creek. He knew he had to stay off the roads. The isolated path seemed like the best bet to get some distance from the hospital while avoiding attention.
He heard sirens in the distance behind him, muffled by the vegetation. His heart raced and he felt nauseous from the adrenaline. He was suddenly exhausted, but forced himself to continue walking in the darkness.
His mind kept replaying the attack in the hospital. He struggled to fill in missing details about the men he had just killed—their faces, voices, accents, nationalities, ethnicities, anything at all that might give him some insight into who the hell was trying to kill him.
It was a fool’s errand, he knew. Regardless of their personal characteristics, the men could have been working for anyone.
He tried to discipline his mind to stop dwelling on the details of the last half hour and think through the big picture.
The Brits? He thought about Ian Banes’s warning, delivered hours earlier on the clandestine floor of the Maple Center. Higgs had no idea how someone might have associated him with the weeks-old murder of the British optical scientist. Higgs really hadn’t had anything to do with the murder. Did someone dime him out? If so, who, and why?
Then there was the dead priest. Damn shame. Higgs had spoken to him just days earlier, and Curmudgeon was as friendly and sharp as ever. Who was behind the hit?
It was anyone’s guess, really. As spies go, the Monsignor was a bit of a whore. He was a skilled player, but he had lacked the discipline to stop acquiring clients. Some of them didn’t like each other. It had to have been dicey trying to keep it all straight, and maybe he had slipped up.
Something bothered Higgs about the incidents in the parking garage and hospital. The goons had been loud and sloppy, spraying bullets everywhere and chasing people through public places. It seemed unprofessional, more gangster than spy.
Were the same clowns behind both scenes? Were they making a point? Or were they just that unsophisticated?
Could it be the Chinese? They could spell “anti-satellite weapons” just as well as everyone else, and they were investing heavily. He could see why they might have put their hands in the cookie jar in the UK, but it didn’t make any sense for them to have killed the British scientist.
Hell, it didn’t make sense for anyone to kill the scientist.
It also wouldn’t make much sense for the Chinese to kill him either, Higgs realized. Healthy competition between nations kept intelligence agencies funded. Ideology aside, all governments were comprised of numerous bureaucracies, competing among themselves for funding. Higgs had done as much as anyone in the last decade to keep American espionage spending levels high, which also worked wonders to keep the Chinese agencies funded well enough to keep up.
The best way to lose your funding was to win the war. The Chinese probably didn’t want him dead.
There was another possibility, one that gave Higgs shivers. It was possible that any one of his employers had seen the need for a permanent separation.
That was a problem. Individually, each of them was capable and ruthless enough to smoke a US senator without batting an eye.
Collectively, they were the best-funded, best-trained, and best-equipped gaggle of horrible people on the planet. If one or more of his masters wanted him dead, he didn’t stand a chance.
Higgs rounded a corner on the jogging trail and suddenly noticed flashing lights. Two hundred yards ahead, the trail and the stream ducked beneath a road, and a police car was parked on the bridge.
Decision time.
Realistically, he wasn’t set up for life on the lam. He was miles from both his residence and his party pad, which was pro
bably for the best—neither place was safe at the moment.
He wasn’t an operator, so he didn’t know where he might find an unoccupied safe house.
Besides, if someone in his own government was trying to snuff him, which was a distinct possibility given how rapidly loyalties seemed to shift, it wouldn’t make much sense to hole up in a government-owned safe house.
Would the local cops protect him? Sure, until the Feds showed up and took over, and it might just be the Feds behind all the day’s drama.
The searchlight snaking its way toward him on the jogging path helped him make up his mind. He turned and ran back around the corner.
And ran smack into a tall redhead.
Sam was back on her feet in a flash. “That’s no way to greet a girl in the woods at midnight, Senator Higgs,” she said. “You’re lucky I didn’t knee you in the balls.”
She helped him up off the ground. “Stand still, feet wide, hands up. I’m going to frisk you.”
She took both of the would-be assassins’ guns from Higgs’s belt and tucked them into her shoulder bag.
“How do you know my name?” he asked, gripping his wounded shoulder and wincing
“It wasn’t exactly rocket science,” Sam said. “You walked out the northwest door of the hospital and crossed the street into the woods. I thought I’d follow you for a chat.”
“How . . . ?” Higgs felt tired and confused. He knew he needed his wits now more than ever, but he couldn’t summon them.
“Dude, you’re in America. There’s one surveillance camera for every ten people.”
Sam grabbed Higgs’s arm and headed along the path toward the hospital. “Nice work taking out the goon squad,” she said, “but your buddy Big-A has a few more questions for you.”
He took a few steps with her, then stopped abruptly. “I don’t know who’s behind this.”
“Seriously? You’re not clairvoyant? I’ll be damned. I guess that’s why they invented investigators. One or two of them happen to be working on this very case, right at this moment.” She noticed he didn’t share her smile.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 124