The Rule of Nine

by Steve Martini

  Thorn must have been looking back for me, using the lights of the train to try to scope me out in the darkness. Instead, I am already past him.

  Now they are closing in on me. I can’t tell how close, maybe no more than ten or fifteen feet away. I can hear Joselyn breathing heavily as he pushes her along. “Keep moving, bitch!” He shoves her and she stumbles forward, landing on her hands and knees almost at my feet. She looks over and sees the bottoms of my pants legs. There is an expression of shock on her face when she sees me. Then she looks away.

  My body presses against the side of the tunnel. The only thing between Thorn and me in this instant is the arching steel I beam.

  Joselyn gets to her feet, takes two steps, and just as Thorn clears the I beam she begins to run. Her sudden action must have startled him, because it takes him a second before he realizes. He focuses all of his energies on the pistol in his hand. He raises it and takes aim just as I reach out and grab his wrist with both hands, forcing the muzzle of the gun up.

  Thorn pulls off the round. The pistol coughs and the bullet ricochets off the ceiling of the tunnel.

  Thorn, startled, tries to wrestle the muzzle of the gun in my direction. But I have one hand on his wrist and the other on the small flat frame of the pistol with his finger trapped inside the trigger guard. He fires another round and the bullet flashes off the concrete just over my head. It is like having a tiger by the tail. If I let loose for an instant, he will draw a bead on me and I will be dead.

  He raises one leg and tries to knee me in the groin. Instead he misses and hits my thigh. A rock comes from out of nowhere and hits him squarely on the side of the head. Blood begins to trickle down his temple. Then another rock and another. Most of them hit him in the upper body. He lifts his left hand and tries to fend off the rocks while he holds on to the pistol with his right.

  He glances over and looks at Joselyn with fire in his eyes. She unloads on him with a machine-gun barrage of rocks, venting the anger of a decade as she tries to stone him to death. She catches me on the hand with one of them. It stings like hell. But I can’t let go of the pistol.

  Thorn lifts his right foot and tries to knee me one more time. As he does it I hook my right foot behind his left ankle and push him away, releasing his wrist and the pistol in the same motion.

  His eyes widen with glee as he begins to go over backward, gripping the pistol with both hands to take aim. A green arc lightens up the cavern as six hundred volts and four thousand amps hiss through his body.

  Thorn writhes like a snake on the third rail as Joselyn runs into my arms and buries her face in my shoulder.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The minute Joselyn and I are able to slip away from the police down inside the tunnel we grab a taxi and head for the hospital.

  I’ve had no word on Herman since the ambulance took him away that morning. By the time we get there and check in at the front desk, I have to arm-wrestle with one of the nurses to get any information at all. Not being family, the hospital is reluctant to release anything.

  The only family Herman has, to my knowledge, is a sister in Detroit, and I don’t have her number. It would be in Herman’s cell phone, which of course the hospital won’t give me.

  An hour later Thorpe shows up with an entourage of FBI agents and a million questions. While he wants to closet both Joselyn and myself until he can vacuum our brains for all of the details of Thorn’s dealings, whatever we know of them, he does at least take the time and use his authority to cut through the red tape at the hospital.

  On Thorpe’s authority they give me Herman’s cell phone. I call his sister and give her the news. In turn she authorizes the doctors to give me whatever information they have concerning Herman’s condition.

  According to the surgeon, it was touch and go when Herman arrived in the ambulance. Following surgery he appears to be out of immediate danger, but the long-term prognosis is guarded and he is not out of the woods.

  In any event, it will be at least two days, possibly longer, before anyone will be allowed to see him, let alone talk with him. There is substantial damage to his right lung and the doctors are concerned that any effort on his part to talk or to move could result in a resumption of internal bleeding. For the time being he is recovering in the intensive care unit and is likely to be there for the better part of a week.

  With that news, and the knowledge that Joselyn and I are not going anywhere, Thorpe and his agents throw a net over us. They gather our luggage, along with Herman’s, check us out of the Hotel George, and put us up in a penthouse in one of the downtown high-rises near FBI headquarters while they proceed to grill us around the clock.

  Thorpe is a little sheepish, and cuts us some slack due to his own failure to take us seriously when I called him from Arizona about Thorn and the plane from the boneyard. We give him the three passports pilfered from Thorn’s luggage along with the small black notebook with the coded phone numbers, and tell him what little we know about Liquida, and that Herman had told me with his last conscious breath that it was the Mexican who’d stabbed him.

  Thorpe informs me they already checked the bloody stiletto dropped in the garage for prints and that they found none. They are anxious to talk to Herman to see if they can get a description. But that will have to wait.

  The minute Joselyn mentions her communications with Senator Joshua Root, and the fact that she had requested his assistance with the FBI, Thorpe’s antennae goes up. He listens intently to the details of her conversations with Root, and Root’s assurances of help and guarantees that Thorpe and his men were on board.

  “Root is dead,” says Thorpe. “According to reports he took his own life about two hours ago. It’s all over the news. I can tell you with certainty that he never contacted us, the cops, or anyone else. The story is still breaking, but according to reports he was in the final stages of terminal cancer. And there’s rumors of serious mental problems. We don’t know all of the details yet.”

  I give him a questioning look.

  “He was supposed to be taking medication, that’s all we know. Why the leadership in the Senate hadn’t taken steps to ease him out we don’t know, especially given the classified nature of the information handled by his committee. At the moment everybody is running for political cover. But we’ll get to the bottom of it, you can be sure of that.”

  That night after Thorpe left us alone, Joselyn showered as I sat in the room and examined the only document I had left from the trove of items Herman and I had taken from Thorn’s luggage. It was my handwritten note jotted down after I had lifted the final invisible note from the back cover of Thorn’s little black book: “Waters of Death, Second Road, Pattaya, Thailand.” There was a phone number along with a note of the instructions that Liquida had been given when Thorn told him to kill Jimmie Snyder, including the kid’s address in Alexandria, Virginia.

  I pick up the hotel room phone on the nightstand next to the bed and dial Sarah’s cell phone. It rings several times before she answers.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, babe, it’s Dad.”

  “Oh, God, I have been so worried. I haven’t heard from you in so long,” she says. “Where are you?”

  “In Washington. We’re okay.” I don’t tell her about Herman. That would unravel her. I will wait until he is out of the hospital and back on his feet. “How’s Harry?”

  “He’s bored. He has cabin fever. The original grumpy old man. What can I say? When can we go home?”

  “Not just yet,” I tell her. “Pretty soon.”

  “Did they catch him?” Sarah is talking about Liquida.

  “They’ll get him. He can’t get far. How’s life on the farm?” I try to change the subject. We talk for several more minutes. It is strange that after all the tension, there isn’t all that much to say. If I talk too long, sooner or later she is going to ask me about Herman and I will have to lie. So we cut it short.

  “See you soon,” I tell her. “I love you.”

  �
��Love you too. How’s Herman?”

  I ignore the question. “Say hello to Harry for me. Bye-bye.”

  “Call me again soon, please. Bye.” She hangs up.

  The moment Sarah hung up she realized—Damn! She’d forgotten to mention the little package he’d sent her or ask him what it was for. It was supposed to be so they could stay in touch. According to the note in the box, he was sending another one to Harry and it was supposed to be a surprise. She wondered for a moment whether she should call him back. She decided against it. She made a mental note to ask him the next time he called.

  Liquida gripped the wheel in obvious discomfort as he steered the rental car north up I-70. The doctor who’d stitched him up had done a pretty good job, though he could not guarantee that the feeling in the fingertips of Liquida’s right hand would ever fully recover.

  Liquida thanked him and then cut his throat. The doctor, at an all-night clinic in downtown Washington, was far too inquisitive as to how the injury had occurred. He had seen too many knife wounds to buy Liquida’s story that it was an industrial accident.

  For the moment all Liquida wanted to do was to put distance between himself and Washington, and he didn’t want to fly. The last thing he needed was TSA running their hand-wand metal detector over the staples in his back. Besides, this way he could stop every few hours. And whenever he wanted to he could layover for the night. Liquida was in no hurry. The investigator was dead, and no one knew where the Mexicutioner was headed. He had business to finish, a labor of love at a farm outside Groveport, Ohio.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people provided encouragement and support in the writing of this book, including family and friends.

  At the very top of the list of those I wish to thank is my assistant, Marianne Dargitz, who for years, on those long lonely days when I stared bug-eyed at empty manuscript pages, offered her boundless patience, constant encouragement, and ever-diligent work to make this and other books possible.

  For particular assistance on technical aspects for this book, I thank Bruce Wilson, whose voluminous research and attention to detail were of incomparable help. In addition, I appreciate greatly the help of Dick Gerry, whose long experience, knowledge, and guidance as a retired commercial airline pilot made possible the crafting of those flight scenes that are so pivotal to this story. That said, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Gerry are in no way responsible for any errors that may have crept into the book, since neither had a hand in the actual writing of the manuscript. For any errors in these regards, the author is solely and entirely responsible.

  Among others to be thanked are my publisher, William Morrow, and all the people at Harper Collins without whose unstinting care and love of publishing nothing would be possible. Most of all I wish to thank my editor, David Highfill, who has been a friend and constant source of encouragement and patience; editorial assistant Gabe Robinson, who fielded my phone calls and handled so many technical aspects during the transition from paper to digital editing; my agent, Esther Newberg, and attorney, John Delaney, of International Creative Management, and my New York lawyers, Mike Rudell and Eric Brown, of Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, for their constant attention and guidance to the business aspects of my publishing career.

  Finally, and not least for their caring interest, love, and constant encouragement, I thank Al and Laura Parmisano, who have been there for me always during good times and bad; my friends Jan Draut, Anna Aleynikova, John Garrison, Mike Padilla, and Jim Bryan; and for her constant and unconditional love, my intelligent, beautiful, and wonderful daughter, Megan Martini, who in my eyes makes all things possible.

  About the Author

  STEVE MARTINI is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including Guardian of Lies, Shadow of Power, and others featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani. Martini has practiced law in California in both state and federal courts and has served as an administrative law judge and supervising hearing officer. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

  www.stevemartini.com

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  ALSO BY STEVE MARTINI

  Guardian of Lies

  Shadow of Power

  Double Tap

  The Arraignment

  The Jury

  The Attorney

  Critical Mass

  The List

  The Judge

  Undue Influence

  Prime Witness

  Compelling Evidence

  The Simeon Chamber

  Credits

  Jacket design by Mjcdesign.com

  Jacket photograph Collage: Raindrops at Window © by Josh Westrich/Photolibrary; Capitol Building © by Jim Pickerell/Photolibrary

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. The events described are imaginary, and the characters are fictitious and not intended to represent specific living persons. Even when settings are referred to by their true names, the incidents portrayed as taking place there are entirely fictitious; the reader should not infer that the events set there ever happened.

  THE RULE OF NINE. Copyright © 2010 by Paul Madriani, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Martini, Steve, 1946–

  The rule of nine: a Paul Madriani novel / Steve Martini.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-06-193021-8

  1. Madriani, Paul (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Radicals—Fiction. 3. United States. Supreme Court—Fiction. 4. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Rule of 9.

  PS3563.A73358R85 2010

  813'.54—dc22

  2010008156

  EPub Edition © May 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-199704-4

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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