by Jack Soren
My God, is he actually telling me the truth? On the off chance he was, she had to make the last question count.
“All right,” she said, leaning forward. “If the press conference draws The Monarch out, are you going to kill him?”
“Finally, a good question!”
“So what’s the answer?”
“No, I personally have no intention of killing him.”
What a strange answer.
“Well, this has been wonderful,” Nathan said, slapping his thighs and standing up. She thought he didn’t seem as solid-footed on the sand now as he had a minute ago. “But, there is still much to do. You have a long trip and, of course, a speech to write.”
Emily stood up. Nathan extended his hand. She thought he wanted to shake hands, so she reciprocated. To her surprise, he took her hand and brought it to his lips, giving a gallant bow as he kissed it.
“I’ll treasure this always,” he said waving the book as he headed off down the beach the way he’d come. There didn’t appear to be anything down there but more beach. She watched him go, realizing she was being left alone on a beach in the middle of who knew where.
She was going to yell after him, but then she saw him stumble. He righted himself, but he had to stop for a minute. He continued his walk slower and more carefully this time, but it wasn’t long before he stumbled again, this time falling to his knees. Then he waved at the air.
What Emily saw next was as surreal as waking up on the beach. Men streamed from the bushes, all dressed in black. There had to be twenty of them, several of whom carried unholstered firearms. She realized they’d been watching the whole time. The men ran to Nathan. Then one of them, after Nathan said something to him, waved at the far end of the beach. A helicopter came roaring around the bend, the blades buffeting the air against Emily’s chest. The chopper landed on the beach next to the men and they helped Nathan up and into the helicopter. Then, almost as fast as it had approached, the helicopter lifted off and headed out to sea. Emily looked out at the water but could see nothing but liquid blue running to the horizon.
Then she saw the remaining men in black headed toward her. She grabbed her belongings and turned to run, only to see that men had streamed out of the bushes behind her, as well. Before she could say anything, one of them placed a device against her neck that hissed and stung like a bee. She slapped her hand to her neck, but before her fingers reached the wound, the beach swam like it too was water.
She felt herself falling and hands grabbing her, but then she felt nothing more.
PART THREE
Sunday
19
Washington Heights
New York City
6:00 A.M. Local Time
“THIS IS IT,” Emily said from the backseat of the cab she’d woken up in. Her head hurt even more. She’d been on two planes in the past fifteen hours. To where and back, she had no idea. When she’d woken up she’d asked the cabbie how she’d gotten there. He’d said two men put her in the cab, gave him two hundred dollars, and said to drive around until she woke up and gave him a destination.
Emily managed her way up the stairs to the front door of her building. As she fished the key out, she saw that the FBI were still watching her apartment.
Once inside, she fed Churchill, who wanted nothing to do with her. He could hold a grudge for days if she accidentally kicked him out of bed while she was sleeping, so who knew how long this would last. Famished herself, she microwaved a couple Jamaican patties and chased them down with some much needed wine.
She took a third cell phone out of her bag and flipped it open. Raiden Pioneer had given it to her. Right after he’d put two tracking devices in the book; one a bulky, obvious device in the spine and the other a leading-edge, thin design secreted beneath the book’s padded leather cover. It was the same trick she’d used on a source for her book, but she’d decided it was best to keep some things to herself.
The device was a passive cellular piggyback GPS unit. Once an hour it would switch on, ascertain its location, and then use the closest cell phone to send a quick text message to her phone, shutting off right after. It made it almost impossible to detect. But Nathan’s comment about hit or miss cell service made her nervous.
She went to the phone’s text messages. There were several from when she still had the book, all from a New York City location. And then there were several hours without an expected message. Probably while she was in flight, she reasoned. Then around 10:00 P.M. Eastern Time last night there was another. She felt a chill as she saw where she’d been.
“Bloody Africa?” She couldn’t believe she’d been halfway around the world and back. Then as she was holding the phone it buzzed the receipt of another message. He was right about hit and miss; she was getting a location message about every five or six hours.
She checked this message and saw that it was from the same vicinity, but several hundred miles to the east. That must have been where the helicopter was going.
Feeling better knowing her long shot was paying off, Nathan apparently none the wiser, she peeled off her clothes and took a shower. She examined the marks on her stomach again as she rinsed the suds off her torso. They didn’t look like they’d leave a scar. It made her angry that someone could do that to her with impunity, but she knew that wasn’t quite true.
Dried and dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, she checked her answering machine. She had almost twenty messages. The first one was from Dan Cooper.
“Um, hi, uh, Miss Burrows?” Dan’s voice said, though it was hard to hear him through the whistling and buffeting of what sounded like a high wind. “It’s Dan. Dan Cooper? I’m not sure what . . . that is, I thought you were going to call my editor? About the . . . you know. Anyways, if you could call me I’d sure appreciate it. Or, actually, just call my editor. Please? Okay. Bye.”
She deleted it, trying to ignore her guilt over using him, especially since she hadn’t been able to use the evidence. The rest of the messages were from her agent. They started off angry but faded into concern. The last message was from Agent Wagner.
“Miss Burrows, call me as soon as you get this. I’d like to speak to you about Dan Cooper’s death.”
Emily almost burned herself. She’d been in the middle of making a cup of tea when she’d heard the message.
“His what?” Emily said to the empty apartment. She realized that somewhere between the message Dan had left and Wagner’s call, something terrible had happened.
Emily jumped on the Internet and after a few searches, found the news story. As she read, her mouth slowly dropped open. By the time she got to the end, she was leaning in so close to the screen the hairs on the tip of her nose stood up from the display’s static electricity.
“Bloody hell,” she said quietly.
The article described Dan as a loner who didn’t fit in. A quiet boy who made his coworkers uneasy. About the time Emily was winging her way to Africa, the naive but enthusiastic boy Emily had met apparently went to the roof of the New York Times building and . . . jumped.
She was having a hard time believing it, but then she thought about the whistling wind in the background of Dan’s message and realized he’d called her from the roof of the building.
“Oh my God.”
When the shock eased, she realized why Wagner wanted to speak to her. They must have a record of the call.
Suddenly, she was very scared. And she knew what she had to do. It would put her father’s reputation at risk, but she just had to hope he could fend for himself. If she allowed herself to think about that too hard—the knighted curator of the British Museum having a fraud and a criminal for a daughter—the guilt would turn her back into a coward. Even the idea of finding The Monarch’s true identity became insignificant.
Emily took the case out of the stove; put the money back in it along with her camera with the pictu
res of Dan’s charts. She put on her coat and scarf, poured some extra food in Churchill’s bowl, and then headed out to the FBI car watching her apartment.
WAGNER ENTERED INTERVIEW Room F on the twenty-second floor at 26 Federal Plaza, where Evans had put her when the agents he’d put on her apartment brought her in. He looked at Miss Burrows, seated at one of the two chairs positioned at the table. She looked exhausted, her eyes and nose red. Obviously she’d been crying. She sat in the chair facing the mirror, her bag clutched to her chest.
On the table in front of her were several items. He stepped closer and when he saw what they were, he glanced up at the camera as if to say I hope you’re getting this. On the table was a metal briefcase, a digital camera, a cell phone, and a file folder with several stacks of cash on top of it. Even from a quick glance, Wagner knew it was thousands of dollars. The listening device inside the metal case was inert, disabled by their techs the second she’d held up a note for them that said “Bug in case.”
“What’s all this about?” Wagner asked.
“Is that camera recording?” she asked. Her tone, though a little shaky, told Wagner she was more mad than sad.
“Yes it is,” Wagner said as he sat down across from her. She looked down at the table and took a slow, deep breath like she was bracing herself. He fought the urge to do the same.
“My name is Emily Denham and I’ve got a story to tell you,” she said. For the next forty-five minutes he listened to a fantastic tale.
She told him everything—her first meeting with Nathan in the limo, Dan Cooper’s visit, the press conference ulterior motive—everything. She finished off with her abduction to Africa.
When she was done, he didn’t respond at all, just got up and left. He joined Evans, who had watched the whole thing through the glass.
“Whaddya think?” Wagner asked. Evans handed him a printout. Wagner saw that he’d run her supposed real name while they were in there. No priors. Well, that was something.
“If it wasn’t for that pile of cash, I’d say she’s a writer who got carried away with her own story. She may still be.”
“I’d agree with you if it wasn’t for that file. That’s not a copy or a mockup. That’s my original personnel file. Only two ways she could have gotten that,” Wagner said, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“Threats or money.”
“Maybe both. Who do you think the rat is?” Wagner asked, knowing someone in the building was in on this. He blew on his coffee and sipped it. It tasted awful and he wished it was cooler so he could toss it back in one gulp.
“Hard to say. My bet would be someone administrative. Outside the action. Easy pickings for someone with enough pull.”
“You mean like someone who could arrange to have traffic cameras go dark at the source?”
“Exactly,” Evans said.
“What about this Africa trip? Sounds pretty out there.”
“Not really. We had a case a few years ago and the guy’s alibi was he was in Mexico on vacation with his family so he couldn’t possibly be guilty. Turned out his employer owned a supersonic jet. Businesses have been getting into supersonic flight for a few years, now. Fly from New York to Paris in like four hours. That kind of thing.”
“No shit,” Wagner said. “The more I learn about this Nathan, if he exists, the more I think we should go ahead with the press conference. He wanted it pretty bad to pull something like this. Might be the best way to get anything on him.”
“Risky,” Evans said. Wagner knew if he thought it was risky it was really risky. “Think she’d play along?”
“Yeah, I do,” Wagner said, looking at Emily through the glass. “She’s pissed. This Monarch, whoever he really is, means something special to her. Look what she risked up until now just to find him. She only balked when she thought Cooper’s death was her fault.”
“Huh,” Evans said with a crooked grin.
“What?”
“Nothing, I think it’s the smart play. I just never thought you’d make it.”
Wagner responded with a slight raise of his eyebrows and sipped some more of the coffee.
“You want me to contact the authorities in Africa, start getting them involved?” Evans asked.
“Not yet. We don’t have much time. Start drawing up a plan for tomorrow. If Nathan tries to make a move, I want him facedown on the sidewalk before he knows what hit him.”
“YOU STILL WANT me to do the press conference?” Emily said. She’d half expected them to come in and haul her off to jail. A lot more than half, actually. Technically, she was pretty sure she hadn’t done anything illegal yet, even if she had been stupid.
“Just like we’d planned,” Wagner said.
“Why would I do that? I told you what these people are capable of, what they’ve done. You’ve got the location, why don’t you just go and get him?”
“For one, the FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction in Africa. For another, what exactly would I arrest him for? All we have is circumstantial evidence and your say-so. And, no offense, but you’re not exactly the model of honesty right now. Plus, we have no idea who he really is. Is Nathan his first or his last name? Is it his name at all? We follow that GPS device to your book and we could be arresting some librarian he gave the book to. We’ve got bupkus. Except—”
“Except for me. You’ve got me and this press conference that Nathan wants to happen.”
“Exactly,” Wagner said. “But we’ve also got something else . . . or we could have something else. With your help.”
“The Monarch,” Emily said, fear in her belly. He wants to use me to lure The Monarch, just like Nathan does.
“This Nathan, or whoever he is, has a hard . . . is motivated to get his hands on this Monarch for some reason. That means if we have The Monarch, we can control the situation. Set up Nathan. Maybe even figure out why he wants him, which could give us evidence and charges against him.”
“And what happens to The Monarch?” Emily asked, already knowing the answer. She wanted to see if Wagner would come clean with her. If she could trust anyone in this mess.
Wagner leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, I won’t lie to you. If he’s cleared of the murders, we’d have to turn him over to Interpol. But from what I read in your book, he’d probably end up skating on that count too. I’m thinking that would be a lot better than whatever Nathan has planned for him.”
Emily knew he was right about that. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m not crazy about being up on a podium in front of a crowd knowing what I know. I think I’d have a huge target on my back. I’m pretty sure that’s why he took his cell phone back. Once the press conference is over I’ll be of no use to him anymore and he doesn’t want any evidence to connect him to me.”
Wagner puffed air through his nose and crossed his arms. He looked at Emily like he was trying to find Waldo.
“What?”
“I’m trying to figure you out. Half the time you talk like a bumbling bookworm, the other half like a cop. Anyway, I already thought of that. We can control the conference—invitation only, controlled area, plants in the crowd. Probably do it downstairs in the lobby. If we need to we can lock it down on a moment’s notice. You’d be perfectly safe.”
Emily bit her lip and thought about the offer. It was better than anything she had hoped for, but it was less than perfect. Even if everything worked out fine and that Nathan bastard got what was coming to him, getting The Monarch outed and dumped in Interpol’s hands wasn’t anywhere near the endgame she wanted. Even if he did avoid jail time, he and everyone in his life would have a target on them. She knew there was a laundry list of private collectors willing to pay anything for the chance to get some payback.
But who knew what would happen after Nathan was out of the picture? At the least, she’d finally be able to write the missing chapter for her book. Ma
ybe even the sequel Raiden had mentioned, not that the thought hadn’t already occurred to her. She’d take that over the not knowing any day, regardless of the risks.
“I’ll do it,” Emily said. “On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Keep it open,” Emily said. She knew Wagner would know why. The more public the forum, the more chance The Monarch would be in the crowd. Of course, that also meant the more chance Nathan’s men would be there too.
“Done.”
20
The Cloisters Museum
New York City
4:00 P.M. Local Time
JONATHAN SAT AT the table and endlessly stirred his coffee while he waited for Lew, who was testing the strength of the café’s food trays. The museum was closing soon and the Trie Café was almost empty.
“Bad news,” Lew said as he arrived at the table. He plunked his tray down. It was loaded with two sandwiches, a coffee, a piece of pie, a piece of cake, and something that looked like rice pudding. Jonathan smiled despite himself.
“They out of whole chickens?”
“Har-dee-har. No, when I was at the cash register, I saw on the news that they’ve set a location for the press conference tomorrow,” Lew said, hitching a thumb toward the television suspended from the ceiling.
“That’s bad?” Jonathan asked. He tried to read the television’s news scroll, but it was too far away.
“No, the location is the lobby of FBI headquarters.”
“Great.”
“We’ll just have to be careful,” Lew said shrugging before he dug into his banquet.
After landing, they’d checked into a midtown hotel and walked to the first murder scene, on the border of Central Park. Jonathan wandered around for almost twenty minutes, finally sitting right where they’d discovered the corpse. There was nothing he could find to show it was anything but a random murder. The view from that location was either of the park or the buildings across the street. Nothing special.