by Gene Riehl
He turned to see Lisa’s Grand Prix racing toward him, skidding to a stop next to his car. Monk jumped out and dashed to her. She lowered her window as he arrived.
“Shotgun’s in the back seat!” she shouted.
He yanked the door open and grabbed the Remington twelve-gauge from the seat.
“Rifled slugs!” she yelled. “Five in the clip, one in the chamber!”
Shotgun in hand, Monk sprinted to the runway.
Bethany was already on her way, the Baron hurtling toward him.
Damn it!
She was going to take off before he could get a shot at her!
Monk fell to one knee. The Baron’s twin engines were screaming as the plane bore down on him. He could see Bethany’s face in the cockpit, staring at him, before the plane lifted into the air.
Monk snapped the Remington to his shoulder. As the Baron passed over his head, he aimed at the bottom of the tail assembly and pulled the trigger.
The Remington kicked like a horse, but he held it fast and racked the action to put another rifled slug into the chamber, then tracked the Baron as it continued over his head. He fired again, four more times, racking the action, pulling the trigger. Saving the last round just in case. Making sure that if he needed it, he wouldn’t be caught with an empty weapon.
But the Baron just kept going.
Monk stared at it. He couldn’t have missed, not five times.
In the next moment it came back down. Bounced once on the tarmac, then bounced a second time before settling to the ground.
He started after it, then realized what he was doing and fell to the tarmac in a prone position, making himself the smallest possible target.
But Bethany wasn’t stopping.
He heard the engines revving up again, saw the Baron leap toward the grassy verge at the end of the runway, toward the woods beyond the grass.
He saw instantly what she was trying to do.
She was heading toward the woods. She would leave the Baron and try to escape into the trees.
Monk jumped to his feet, turned toward Lisa, but she was already on her way to him. He turned back toward the Baron. The plane was on the grass already. He saw the cockpit door opening just as Lisa pulled up. He jerked the car door open and threw himself inside as Lisa trampled the accelerator. The Grand Prix shot toward the Baron as Bethany jumped off the wing and ran toward the trees.
Seconds later the Pontiac flew across the grass and skidded to a stop just short of the woods. Monk jumped out, the Remington in his hand. Bethany was twenty yards ahead of him, but he was close enough now.
“Stop!” he bellowed. “Stop or I’ll shoot you!”
But she didn’t stop … not for a few more paces at least … when she wheeled to face Monk, her arm swinging around in one motion, the pistol in her hand aiming directly at his head.
Monk yanked the Remington to his shoulder and fired.
The recoil rocked him back on his heels. Bethany rose from the ground and hurtled backward into the tree behind her and seemed to hang there for a moment before sliding to the dirt.
A moment later, Lisa was at Monk’s side.
Together they walked toward the body.
Bethany lay on the ground at the base of the tree. There was a hole the size of a dinner plate squarely in the center of the long-sleeved blue and white shirt she was wearing, just below the name “Mary Anne,” written in black script above her right breast. Her long red hair was flung above her head against the tree, and her luminous green eyes stared at a point somewhere over Monk’s left shoulder.
In the distance Monk heard sirens coming their way. Beside him, Lisa’s voice sounded just as far off.
“Bethany?” she said. “Bethany Randall?”
She stared at the body before turning back to Monk.
“I don’t understand …” she began, then stopped for a moment before starting over. “What in the name of God just happened here?” She paused again. “Who is this? What …?” She ran out of words.
Monk looked at her, then took Lisa’s arm and led her back toward the Baron. The sirens were louder now. The people in those cars would have questions, too, lots of questions he wasn’t about to answer until he’d talked with the people who’d be regulating the flow of information about this.
In the meantime, Monk held tighter to Lisa and got ready to lie.
SIXTY-EIGHT
Another funeral, Monk thought.
Although this didn’t really look like one.
No church this time. No music. No real mourners.
Just he and Lisa, in this lonely corner of Arlington National Cemetery, and two guys from NSA. Nobody Monk had ever seen or heard of. Blue-suited automatons assigned to see William into the ground. One listening to the preacher, the other’s eyes everywhere at once, looking for God knew what. The enemy was dead. Bethany had already been buried, he’d seen it with his own eyes, when he said goodbye to the woman who in the end had been nothing more than a victim herself. An infant ripped away from her parents and brought up to a life of hatred.
“Please take the soul of William Smith,” the rail-thin preacher said. “Bear him into your presence, and give him peace.”
Peace. At least William had a chance for that now. For the rest of us, Monk thought, well, we know better, don’t we? There would never be peace again, not while half the world had no interest in such a thing. Not while the hatred continued to grow, and organizations like Division 39 continued to flourish.
Monk glanced at Lisa and she squeezed his hand. He’d almost lost her, Monk knew, in a couple of different ways, but now they would repair the damage the last few weeks had done. Her ex-fiancé from Texas had come to his senses and quit stalking her, but that wasn’t the only reason to celebrate. Monk patted the breast pocket of his charcoal suit jacket. He would keep the results of his PET scan next to his body until he got completely used to the good news.
The bad news was that the country was in a state of shock. If the terrorists could attack the president of the United States, everyone was saying, then no place in America was safe. The media exploited the hysteria. An outrage … another failure of our intelligence agencies … heads must roll … no stone unturned … no rest for anyone until the guilty are brought to justice. That kind of thing.
And the media didn’t know the half of it.
As was so often the case, the truth had been carefully hidden away. Even Monk’s masters at the Hoover Building didn’t know the whole story.
Which was going to be a problem, he knew, and he couldn’t help but appreciate the paradox: that by succeeding he’d guaranteed his own failure.
Even though he’d stopped the unthinkable, he’d failed to carry out his bureau assignment. Even though he’d saved the president and the prime minister, unmasked and eliminated North Korea’s deadliest sleeper assassin, he’d failed to recover not only the Madonna, but the rest of the stolen masterpieces in Franklin’s secret vault as well. If the missing paintings had been in the south wing of Franklin’s mansion, they’d been reduced to atoms in the explosion. If Bethany had removed them prior to that time, it could be a hundred years before they turned up again. And no matter which scenario proved correct, Monk couldn’t tell the Hoover Building even one word about his involvement.
The president had made that pretty damned clear.
For reasons of national security—for the good of the nuclear weapons pact with Japan—the truth about Battle Valley Farm and its billionaire owner would never see the headlines. Thomas Franklin had avoided public disgrace, as had the president for becoming so close to such a man. It wasn’t the first time Monk had seen such a trade-off, but he felt no outrage. The president was nothing more than another victim, and even in a democracy the public did not have an unlimited right to know. And the FBI didn’t either. Until the White House was certain there were no leaks at the Hoover Building, no one at Ninth and Pennsylvania would know the whole truth, either.
Monk’s gaze dropped to Willia
m’s grave. The cemetery workers had arrived and were in the process of lowering the casket into the ground. Monk found himself wishing he could say something to William before the man who was once a friend disappeared forever. Bethany was good at her job, he wanted to say, she was a good sleeper in every sense of the word. You never had a chance against her. Franklin didn’t, either, and I would have been next. If I hadn’t been walking around lucky, I’d be in the grave right next to yours.
Again he felt Lisa’s hand squeezing his. He looked at her, and as he did so Monk noticed something else.
On the street beyond the headstones, a black limo was approaching. As it slowed, the rear window opened, and Monk saw a face appear. He nodded as he recognized the most important face in Washington. The president inclined his head as well, before the window slid back up and the limo moved on.
EPILOGUE
Could life get any better? Cho Li wondered.
In the long shadows of the late afternoon sun, Rome had never looked more stunning, or the Piazza di Spagna more dramatic. Even the pigeons looked happier in the cozy glow, and the dazzling beauty of the flowers cascading down the Spanish Steps—the reds and yellows, purples and golds—was positively heart-stopping. For a girl who’d just turned eighteen, it was almost too much to bear.
Sitting with her parents at an outdoor table at the Caffè Greco, the girl who’d been born in Denver as Jennifer Browning gazed past the thicket of green umbrellas covering the tables to a young couple stopping at the Fontana di Trevi to add their wishful coins to the countless others. Cho Li smiled at them, then checked out the throng of tourists meandering through the piazza. She listened for a moment to the excited voices, then reached across the table and touched her adopted mother’s hand.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” Cho Li asked. “Why do you look so sad?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A novel is conceived in the author’s imagination, but it doesn’t have a chance to make it to the light of day without lots of help. Listing the names of those who contributed to this one is small payment indeed, but here goes anyway.
Lee Johnson read the earliest version of the story and helped get it started in a better direction, and Gayle Kehrli added her own insight near the end of the project. Thanks to Mike Stafford and Ira Gourvitz, for the gift of unflagging support every writer should enjoy, and Dean Moore, for helping me see Monk’s world through different eyes. From the FBI, former Special Agents Clyde Fuller and George Fox, and current Special Agents Gayle Jacobs and Kurt Swann, provided many of the details that found their way into the story. Former Secret Service Presidential Detail Chief Michael Endicott took time from the writing of his own book to help out. Ernie Choi shared his knowledge of the Korean language, and Bill Scott did the same thing with his expertise as both a fixed-wing and helicopter pilot. Pathologist Dr. Bob Keefe knows why people die, and what it takes to kill them.
The insight of Dr. George Pratt, Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Scripps Memorial Hospital, La Jolla, California, was invaluable in the process of deepening and enriching my understanding of Puller Monk, as well as helping me get a better handle on the creative process itself. Thanks also to Dr. Gregory McFadden of the Psychiatric Centers of San Diego for his suggestions that led to new ideas.
From St. Martin’s Press, my supurb editor Marc Resnick not only kept the story going in the right direction, but did it far more tactfully than I would have been able to manage. I’m also grateful for the extraordinary amount of attention this project got from St. Martin’s publishers Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, and John Cunningham, and marketing director Matthew Baldacci.
My literary agents, Jean Naggar and Jennifer Weltz, continue to extend my readership into parts of the world I would never have believed possible. Jerry Kalajian, my Hollywood agent, makes sure my work gets into the right hands at the right time, and his former assistant, Bryon Schreckengost, never failed to brighten my day. In San Diego, my great friend and fellow author Ken Kuhlken is always there when the going gets murky.
I would also like to acknowledge my debt to Frederick and Steven Barthelme’s Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss, a riveting account of two intellectuals and their misadventures in gaming.
My daughter, Brenda Lewis, was a huge part of making this story come to life for me, and my son, Matthew Riehl, is a tireless supporter of my work.
But most of all I thank my wife, Diane Martin Riehl. Her keen eye for the essence of a scene, of a chapter, or indeed the entire novel, helped turn an idea into a full-blown story. I couldn’t have done it without her.
About the Author
Gene Riehl is the author of Quantico Rules and Sleeper, thriller novels that feature FBI agent Puller Monk. A former FBI agent himself, Riehl specialized in foreign counterintelligence and espionage during his law-enforcement career. He has served as the on-air terrorism analyst for a major broadcast group representing the CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox television networks. He lives in La Jolla, California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Gene Riehl
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1864-7
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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