by Andrew Grant
“The virus they found on my computer? She accused me of creating it. And using it to attack the White House.”
McKenna let out a long, low whistle.
“Wow. She’s really trying to lay the whole nine yards on you. Well, Marc, don’t worry. We know you’re not behind that virus, whatever it’s supposed to do.”
“Thanks. And the virus? It got onto my computer while I was working at AmeriTel, right? I can’t figure out any other way it could have happened.”
“Yes.” He paused for a moment. “I’m sure it spread to your computer from there.”
“Thank you.” I felt my grip on reality grow a little tighter. And with that, I suddenly saw how another piece of the puzzle might fit into place. “The memory stick. The one that was stolen. That’s why you pressed me on it, isn’t it? You knew about the virus, even then. That’s why you wanted the stick, or anything else that could have AmeriTel data on it.”
“We knew about the virus,” he admitted. “But we didn’t know for sure it had spread. We needed to find out.”
“Is that why someone broke into my house? To check if the virus was on my home computer?”
“I don’t think so.” McKenna reached out and adjusted his door mirror.
“But, maybe why the computer was stolen from the police?”
McKenna grunted, but I couldn’t tell if he meant yes or no.
“How come you knew these things days ago, but Brooking and Peever were still in the dark?”
McKenna didn’t respond right away, and for a moment I thought he’d clammed up for good. Then he raised his right hand, like he wanted to stop me from saying anything else.
“I shouldn’t be doing this, Marc. You’re a civilian. But you’re up to your ass in this thing, and I think you’ve proved I can trust you. Just don’t make me live to regret it.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“You better not. Because the picture I’m going to paint—it doesn’t show the department in the best possible light.”
“I understand. What you say in this truck stays in this truck.”
“Good. Because the truth is, there’s a helluva lot we just don’t know. And part of that’s my fault. Look at Peever. He’s probably dirty. I should have twigged to that earlier. But Homeland Security’s like any other agency, anywhere in the world. You’re never quick to suspect your own.”
“I get that. But what about Brooking?”
“She’s clean, as far as I know. Only she was recently brought in, so she’s not up to speed.”
“And the police? The detectives, and the others?”
“In the clear, as far as I can tell.” McKenna paused. We’d reached an intersection, and he couldn’t turn left as he’d intended, due to some construction. “The problem is, they don’t have high-enough security clearance. Fewer than a dozen people in the country do. That’s why I couldn’t let that officer stay within earshot when I pulled you out of the back.”
“And the fire? At the station house? You started it.”
“It was just a smoke generator. No flames. No damage done. Hits the spot every time. Want to get people running around like headless chickens? Make them think there’s a fire nearby. Tap into their primal fear.”
“And the motorcycle guys?”
“My guess, they’re the muscle for whoever’s behind all this. The attack—be it on ARGUS, the White House, or both—is going through AmeriTel. But we don’t think it was dreamed up by anyone who works there. Their background checks all pan out. The AmeriTel guys are most likely just patsies.”
“You know, you’re the only one who doesn’t try to bullshit me, or stonewall me, or frame me. And I appreciate that.”
“You’re a good—”
McKenna broke off mid-sentence as we swung through a tight turn and almost slammed into two cars that had just run into each other. Both were on our side of the road, blocking our way forward, and a man’s body was sprawled in the other lane.
“Oh my God, they’ve had an accident!” I reached for my door handle. “We’ve got to help—”
“Leave it!” McKenna slammed the truck into reverse. “Get down. Ambush!”
The truck had moved back about three feet when McKenna stamped on the brake again. A man had raced across the road behind us. He was pulling a kind of chain. But instead of smooth round links, it was made of vicious three-inch spikes.
“A stinger.” McKenna shifted into Drive and hit the gas again. “Can’t risk it. The tires would shred.”
He steered sharp left, accelerating hard, aiming directly for the body in the road. Our wheels were going to crush the man’s head. I was about to shout a warning—how could McKenna not see what was happening?—when the guy raised himself up like a sprinter in the blocks and flung himself toward the curb. He was dragging something behind him. Another stinger. And he’d cut his move so fine there was no time for McKenna to react.
There were two bangs. Our tires had blown. McKenna fought the steering wheel, trying to keep going. For a moment I thought we might make it. But then the truck pulled left and shuddered to a halt. McKenna flashed a worried look in my direction, then pulled out his gun.
“Wait here.” He opened his door. “Lock the truck after me. And stay down. Do not get out under any circumstances.”
As he spoke, a third guy appeared from behind one of the wrecked cars. His face was hidden by a black balaclava, and he was holding something in one hand. A glass bottle. It was a quarter full with clear liquid and a rag was sticking out of the top. He had a lighter in his other hand, and with one swift movement he set fire to the rag, flung the bottle toward the truck, and ducked down out of sight. I heard the glass smash, and then a dull whump as the liquid went up in flames.
“Come on!” McKenna yelled, unnecessarily, because my door was already open. “The prison officer. In the back. We’ve got to get him out.”
A pool of liquid was burning fiercely in my path. I started to loop around it, but someone grabbed my arm. It was the guy who’d thrown the bottle. He pulled me back, slammed me against one of the cars, and pressed a heavy brown envelope into my hand.
“RUN!” he said, then let go of me.
I stayed still.
“What are you waiting for?” he snarled. “Go.”
“Who are you?”
“Your guardian angel. Now, go.”
I hesitated, tempted to rip the mask from his face.
“RUN!” he snarled again. Only this time he pulled a gun.
Thursday. Late afternoon.
FOR THE SECOND TIME IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS I FOUND MYSELF running blindly through an unfamiliar neighborhood. Only this time, I knew exactly where I wanted to go.
I just had no idea how to get there.
The net was tightening around me so I forced myself to keep moving for another fifteen minutes, then paused to take stock of my situation. A giant oak at the side of the road gave me some cover, and as I leaned against its gnarled trunk, wheezing, I realized I was still clutching the envelope the guy in the balaclava had given me.
I tore it open and tipped its contents onto the ground. There was a cell phone, and a wad of ten-dollar bills. A couple of dozen of them. It was spookily similar to what Brian had given me at his apartment, the day before. Was he involved, somehow? Or was this a kind of standard urban survival kit, to be handed out to IT consultants on the run? I didn’t waste too much time thinking about it, though. Because I knew right away I wasn’t just looking at things. I was looking at a way to untie the noose from around my neck and turn it into a lifeline. Maybe the only lifeline I had left.
I powered up the phone, dialed a number for a pizza restaurant, and gave the address I could see painted on a shiny red mailbox on the other side of the street. Then I settled down to wait, dreading the howl of a siren or the pulsing of red and blue lights.
Twenty minutes later I picked up the sound of an engine. But not a throaty V8 like the police use. More like a couple of bees in a beer can. Moments l
ater a delivery guy wobbled into view on a decrepit moped. He pulled up at the side of the street, opposite me. Took off his helmet, and hung it on the handlebars. Then retrieved a pizza from the insulated box behind the saddle and set off up the drive on foot.
I ran to the bike and strapped on the helmet. I took half the money from the mystery guy’s envelope and left it on the ground, weighed down with a stone. Then I fired up the tiny engine and launched myself onto the road.
I hadn’t ridden a moped for ten years, when Carolyn and I spent a week together in Rhodes. I’d been happy tooling around the island, back then, recharging my batteries at the beaches and the bars. Her plans had been more ambitious. She’d been obsessed with taking a ferry to Turkey, to see the remains of some ancient theater. The clash of agendas hadn’t made for a peaceful vacation. But it had taught me to move fast on two wheels.
I made it as far as my street without a problem, but then I spotted two cars parked near the entrance to my driveway. Both were dark blue, unmarked Fords. I drew level with the first one, and its engine roared into life. I managed another ten feet before it started to move. It was coming after me, with its twin glued to its tail. I eased back on the throttle, deflated. There was no way I could outrun them. But the cars swept past me, still accelerating, until they were around the corner and out of sight.
My heart was racing as I looped around, coasted to the side of the road, and killed the engine. Then I started to wheel the bike down my drive, trying to balance my urge to get out of sight with the need to move quietly across the gravel.
I reached my door, and realized there was another problem. I didn’t have a key. It was still at the police headquarters. But I’d come too far to give up. The house had plenty of windows. I could break one. Climb inside. Get what I needed. And disappear back into the night.
The question was, which window? Do smaller ones make less noise when they shatter? Or would it make more sense to break one in the kitchen, to be closer to my objective? I was weighing my options when it occurred to me that if glass had to be broken, there was a better option close at hand.
I picked up a small, pointy stone and crossed to the trunk of my Jaguar. I smashed the lens covering the license-plate lamp. Removed the bulb. Used the clasp on the helmet strap to bridge the terminals, which shorted out the light. And with it, the central locking. Just as the auto club guy had done last summer, after Carolyn had locked the keys in the trunk in her haste to drag me to The Tempest in Central Park. And that guy’d had a whole van full of tools at his disposal …
My garage remote is built into the Jaguar’s sun visor so I reached in and hit the button. The door began to clank its way up, agonizingly slowly. I waited until it was half open then ducked underneath, crossed to the kitchen door, and let myself inside. I lifted up the loose section of countertop, held my breath, and slid my fingers into the gap. Sure enough, the memory stick was still there. I pulled it out, dropped the slab back in place, and turned to leave.
Only I couldn’t. Because my path was blocked.
A man was standing in the doorway.
Thursday. Late afternoon.
PRETEND TO WITHDRAW, AND BRING YOUR QUARRY RUNNING OUT into the open. A ruse that’s been in use since Genghis Khan’s time. Probably longer. And I fell for it. I felt like a twenty-four-carat fool.
“Officer, this isn’t how it looks. Or should that be Agent?”
A hint of a smile spread across the guy’s face.
“No agents here, Marc.” He shook his head. “And the police? They were the guys who just left.”
“You know my name?”
“I know all about you.”
“How—”
“Doesn’t matter how. I know.”
“No. I was going to ask, how did you get rid of the police?”
“It’s amazing what a well-placed anonymous tip can do.”
Not when I tried making one, I thought, which did nothing to lift my spirits.
“OK,” I said. “What do you want?”
“The memory stick. That’s all. Put it down, and back away slowly.”
I didn’t know what to do. The guy looked like he meant business, but I needed that memory stick. Without it, I’d never get the police and Homeland Security off my back. I felt my fingers tighten, pressing it into my palm.
“Put it down.” The guy shifted his weight very slightly so that his jacket gaped open, revealing the handle of a pistol. “Drop it on the countertop. All I want is the memory stick. Then I’ll leave.”
A sudden shiver rippled down my spine, triggered by something in the tone of the guy’s voice. I’d heard it before. Earlier that day. And then it clicked. This was the guy who’d thrown the Molotov cocktail. The one who’d given me the money and the phone, and told me to run. Only when I’d met him earlier, his face had been hidden. Now it wasn’t. I could see him clearly. I’d be able to describe him to a sketch artist without any problem at all. And I couldn’t imagine a single circumstance where he’d leave me alive to do that.
“You’ll let me go, if I give it to you?”
“Absolutely. The stick is all I want.”
“OK. You can have it. No problem. But can I keep the other one?”
“What other one?” He took a step into the room.
“Well, I had three. I brought them home from my old job, after I got fired. One got stolen—I had a break-in—and the police are doing nothing about getting it back. You’re going to take this one. Can I keep the third one? I’m being cooperative, here. And the data on that third stick would really help me with my research.”
“You stole that data.” He took another step toward me. “So, no. You can’t keep any of it. You can’t start trying to do deals for it. You can’t use it in your research. What you can do is give it to me. And then forget you ever met me.”
“OK, OK.” I held my left hand up as if in surrender and used my right to slip the stick into the back pocket of my jeans. “You can’t blame me for asking. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? I’ll get it for you right away. You’re welcome to it. And after that, if anyone asks, no one was here tonight. Not you. Not me. Not anyone else. OK?”
“Get it, then. What are you waiting for?”
“Give me two minutes.” I tried to steer a path around him to the door. “I’ll be right back with it.”
“Are you looking to take a beating?” He stepped across, blocking my way. “Where is it?”
My mind was in overdrive. If I couldn’t run, I’d have to hide. Or barricade myself in, somewhere. But where? Ours was a regular suburban home. It hadn’t been designed with defense against home invaders in mind. There certainly wasn’t anywhere suitable on the first floor. What about upstairs? The attic? That was the farthest away. But no. It wouldn’t work. The retractable ladder was broken. It shot uncontrollably down through the trapdoor when you opened it, and always took five or ten tries to fold it back up. So where else? Our bedroom, maybe? The door had a lock, and if I could get in fast enough I could drag the dresser in front of it for extra security. That should be enough to hold the guy at bay for a few minutes, at least.
“It’s in the safe. It’ll only take a moment to grab it. Why don’t you—”
“Bullshit. I already checked. The safe was the first place I looked, Monday night. There’s only passports and papers in there.”
“The safe in the bedroom?”
“In the home office.”
The bastard had been in my study while I’d been upstairs, drunk and asleep. And that creeped me out more than the current situation with him standing in front of me, armed and full of threats.
“That’s the old safe. The last owners installed it. The really valuable stuff I keep upstairs, in the new one. It’s much better.”
“In the master bedroom?” He sounded suspicious. “Where? I didn’t see one.”
He’d been in my bedroom, that night? What if Carolyn had been there? I felt a surge of anger start to replace my fear.
“I
t’s very well hidden. Impossible to find if you don’t know it’s there. That’s why it cost such a fortune.”
The guy didn’t look convinced, so I pressed on before he could ask any more questions.
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
He let me walk down the hallway in front of him, but I paused at the bottom of the staircase, foolish enough to try one more thing.
“There’s no need for both of us to troop up there. Hang out here, if you want. I’ll grab it and be right back down. The bedroom’s on the second floor. Where am I going to go?”
“Shut up and move.” The guy planted a hand between my shoulder blades and shoved hard. I went down, face-first, into the stairs. The edge of a tread hit me just below the bridge of my nose. I heard a crunch and felt a sharp, stabbing pain. Two, three, four red dots appeared on the carpet, looking like burn holes in the light-colored pile, and when I lifted my head I could feel the blood running down onto my chin.
I scrambled up the first few stairs on all fours, like a child. My upper front teeth felt like they were falling out. My heart was slamming against my ribs like a hammer, and that made me think—dresser or no dresser, I wasn’t going to be able to keep this guy on the right side of my bedroom door for long, given the strength he’d just shown. And the temper. I’d need help. But who could I call? McKenna? Was he still alive? The last time I’d seen him he was trying to rescue a man in a burning truck from three armed attackers. The odds of him having survived weren’t good. That only left the police. They’d arrest me. Throw the book at me for breaking out of jail. Resisting arrest. All kinds of things. Or hand me over to Brooking, who’d add whatever had happened to McKenna to her list of accusations. But it was a risk I’d have to take. Jail—or Guantanamo Bay—was better than the cemetery, even if it was unjustified.
The guy stayed tight behind me on the stairs. But when we reached the top he dropped back, offering me a brief glimpse of an alternative way out. He was bigger and stronger, but I was lighter and—I hoped—faster. So I feinted right, the opposite direction from the bedroom, then twisted back around and made a desperate leap for the stairs. If I could get to the hallway before him it would give me half a chance. To run back to the kitchen. Or dive out through the front door. I didn’t care which. All that mattered was getting away.