Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3) (7 page)

The taxi got him as far as Farragut Square before traffic ground to a halt. Conrad got the cabbie to pull over, took the HK P8 semiautomatic and the gilded staff out of the luggage, and gifted the cases and the golf bag to the bemused taxi driver. He walked the rest of the way to H Street NW.

Despite the day’s festivities being concentrated near Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenue, it was still slow going. Street stands and temporary food pavilions had been set up on the sidewalks, and although it was too early for the crowds that would soon flock to the downtown area, there were plenty of people around.

By the time he reached a Starbucks some three hundred feet from the intersection of H Street NW and 10th Street NW, the temperature was nearing seventy degrees. Sweat dampened the back of his shirt, inches above the gun and staff weapon tucked inside his waistband. He went inside the coffeehouse, ordered an ice-cold drink, and took a seat near the window. He removed the prepaid cell from his pocket and stared at it for some time. He finally dialed the number Anatole had given to Gordian.

It rang three times before someone answered.

‘Hartwell here,’ said a female voice briskly. ‘Who is this?’

Although Conrad had been mentally preparing himself for this moment from the second he saw her photograph inside the dead man’s briefcase in Alvarães, his heart still stuttered painfully inside his chest at the sound of his soulmate’s voice. The old, familiar rush of bittersweet emotions rose to the surface of his mind, threatening to drown him. His fingers clenched around the cell phone.

A pair of college students sat down in the booth in front of him. One of them bobbed his head at what his friend was saying and took an iPad out of his satchel.

‘Hello? Is someone there?’ snapped Laura Hartwell at the other end of the line. A low hubbub of conversation rose in the background behind her.

Conrad blinked and lowered his head. ‘It’s me,’ he said quietly, cradling the phone close to his face. He was surprised at how composed his voice sounded.

He heard her inhale sharply. Frozen silence rose from the earpiece.

‘What do you want?’ Laura said finally.

Conrad looked out of the window at the heavy traffic clogging the avenue and steadied his nerves.

‘Two days ago, a private plane crashed near my place in Brazil,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Both the pilot and the passenger died on impact. I found a briefcase in the debris. Inside it was a gun and an envelope containing an encoded sheet, maps, and photographs. One of the pictures was of you, dressed in what I assume are your work clothes. From your current job description, the other shots must be of your colleagues in the Secret Service.’

A lull followed his words. ‘That’s a great story,’ Laura said coolly. ‘How did you get this number?’

The guy with the iPad started to watch a TV show on the tablet. Conrad glanced around as music blared from its speakers. He turned away and tucked the phone closer to his ear.

‘Anatole gave it to Gordian, who passed it on to me.’ Conrad sighed and rubbed his forehead. ‘Can you think of a single good reason why I would suddenly call you out of the blue and tell you such an elaborate story, after all this time?’

‘I need to have a word with that bastard about who he gives my number to,’ Laura muttered. ‘And no, I can’t,’ she added after a thoughtful silence. ‘Since you know it’s over between us, I seriously cannot imagine what you think you’ll gain by making up something so ludicrous.’

A centuries-old pain stabbed through Conrad’s heart at her words. He swallowed the painful lump in his throat.

‘Where are you?’ Laura demanded.

‘Around the corner from your building,’ he replied, struggling to keep his tone casual. He heard her breath catch.

‘You’re outside the office of the US Secret Service?’ she said, incredulous.

‘Yes,’ said Conrad. ‘I’m sitting within three hundred feet of it.’ He thought he heard her swear under her breath. ‘I’ve got the envelope with me. I thought you should see it.’

Someone called Laura’s name in the background. ‘Yeah, I’m coming,’ she responded tersely. ‘Look, I can’t talk right now,’ she continued in a low voice. ‘I’m in the middle of something.’

Conrad tried to ignore the heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘When can we meet?’

‘By the end of today, maybe,’ Laura replied distractedly.

Conrad looked to the booth where the two students now sat watching a local news channel. An anchorwoman spoke enthusiastically in the background while shots of the weekend celebrations flashed across the screen.

‘Is there someone in your local office you would rather I show this to?’

Although he was loath to make the offer, Conrad felt he had to ask the question. He could almost see her frowning in the silence that followed.

‘No. All my team are out here,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later to fix up a meet.’

The disconnect tone echoed in Conrad’s ears. He ended the call and looked down at his hands. He was amazed they weren’t shaking. He listened distractedly as a short musical tune from the young man’s iPad heralded the weather section of the news bulletin. He tucked the cell phone inside his pocket, rose from the window seat with the rucksack on his shoulder, and was strolling past the college students’ booth when he heard something that stopped him in his tracks.

‘—so all in all, it’s going to be a very warm and pleasant day for us, folks,’ the reporter was saying in a lively voice. ‘Elsewhere, there are fears that the system of low pressure in the Pacific Northwest might lead to a tropical cyclone in the next twelve hours. Forecasters are predicting that it won’t be anywhere on the same scale as the Columbus Day storm of 1962—’

Conrad stiffened. A distant memory surfaced at the back of his mind; something about a storm. The feeling that he had just missed an important clue niggled at his subconscious. He stared blindly into space as he mentally went through the events of the last forty-eight hours.

An image of the encoded sheet flashed in front of his eyes. His breath froze in his lungs. Conrad twisted on his heels and stepped toward the booth.

‘Excuse me, can I ask you guys to look something up?’ He masked the urgency in his voice behind a smile.

The student with the iPad raised his head, looked at him from head to toe, and shrugged. ‘Sure, dude. What did you wanna know?’

‘Can you tell me the name of the 1962 Columbus Day storm?’ said Conrad. He waited tensely while the kid tapped on the tablet screen.

‘Yeah. It was called Typhoon Freda,’ said the college student.

Conrad thanked him numbly, the words from the Japanese poem screaming in his mind.

“On Freda’s Dark Day

For the Rightful Blood to rise

The Falcon must fall”

A sudden premonition made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Conrad grabbed his cell and frantically dialed Laura Hartwell’s number again.

She picked up after the second ring. ‘Yes?’ she hissed.

‘What’s your codename for President Westwood?’ said Conrad, his knuckles whitening on the phone.

Static crackled down the line. ‘What—that?—breaking up—’ came the disjointed reply.

Conrad swore and looked at the cell’s signal. He had four bars; the problem had to be at Hartwell’s end. ‘The codename! What’s the codename for the president?’ he barked into the mouthpiece, aware of the frightened looks he was receiving from the two college students and a nearby Starbucks cleaner.

The line fizzled for a couple of seconds. Laura’s voice suddenly came through, clear as a bell in between the garbled sounds from the low signal. ‘—Falcon. His codename is Falcon—’

Icy fingers gripped Conrad’s heart. ‘Listen! I think something big is going to go down with the president today!’ He saw a female employee reach for the phone behind the counter, alarm evident on her face. ‘Are you with him?’

There was silence at the end of the line for a couple of beats before a busy tone sounded.

‘Laura? Laura, can you hear me? Where are you?’ Conrad shouted desperately into the mouthpiece of the cell. The busy signal continued to mock him. ‘Shit!’

He dialed again, his fingers almost striking the wrong keys in his haste. This time, a computerized voice stated that the person he was trying to contact could not be reached. He spun toward the college students. They shrank back in the booth.

‘Can I borrow that?’ he demanded, extending his hand to the iPad.

The kid practically threw the tablet at him. ‘Dude, take whatever you want! Just…don’t hurt us, ’kay?’

The coffeehouse was emptying fast, the customers eyeing him fearfully as they streamed through the exit; Conrad got the distinct impression they were committing his face to memory in case he made the six o’clock news.

He tapped on the tablet, typed something into a search engine, and opened the first web page that came up. He scanned the information swiftly. Seconds later, his finger froze on the screen. Conrad went back to the search engine, punched in directions for an address, and scrutinized the map that came up until he had it memorized. He tossed the tablet on the lap of the stunned college student, shouted a quick ‘Thanks!’ and raced for the door.

From the White House schedule he had just looked up, President Westwood was attending a special Columbus Day fundraiser at FedEx Field, home of the Washington Redskins football team, in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He was due to give a speech at ten thirty to an audience of approximately 85,000 spectators.

Conrad skidded to a stop on the sidewalk outside the Starbucks and glanced at his watch. It was five to nine; he had ninety-five minutes to get to the stadium and stop a possible assassination attempt on the president of the United States.

He looked around, spotted a suitable target coming up to the intersection on the left, and dashed out into the middle of the avenue. Brakes squealed and tires screeched in the eastbound lanes as traffic swung wildly around him. The horns blasting in the air were interspersed with waves of profanity.

Conrad ignored the yelling and general clamor, and stood facing the black Ford SUV barreling down the road toward him.

A man in a suit was talking on a Bluetooth headset behind the wheel. It took him a couple of seconds to notice Conrad. He gaped and slammed on his brakes. The SUV screamed to a stop a foot from the immortal’s shins. The driver’s head whiplashed violently against the steering wheel.

Conrad strode around to the side of the vehicle, yanked the door open, and swept the HK P8 out of his waistband. He gestured with the gun. ‘Out!’

‘Hey—hey, ta—take it easy!’ the guy stammered, face ashen but for the rapidly growing red mark on his forehead.

Conrad grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him out onto the blacktop. He ignored the man’s shocked cry, climbed behind the wheel, and threw his rucksack onto the passenger seat. He smiled grimly when he spotted the manual transmission. His gaze alighted on a briefcase in the passenger footwell as he buckled himself in. He chucked it out of the window in the direction of the slack-jawed man sitting on the asphalt, shifted into first, and stepped on the gas pedal.

The Ford shot forward. A cacophony of blares exploded around him as the SUV accelerated. Conrad swerved across the orange centerlines and steered sharply around the traffic headed east on the avenue. Two thousand feet later, he hung a tight left on 6th Street before swinging the vehicle in a sharp right onto New York Avenue.

As signs for Interstates 95 and 495 started to flash past, Conrad took his cell out and dialed 911, his spare hand alternating between the steering wheel and the transmission.

‘Operator. What’s your emergency?’ said a female voice.

‘My name is Conrad Greene! I need you to get a message to US Secret Service agent Laura Hartwell!’ he barked into the mouthpiece. ‘She’s at the FedEx Field stadium in Maryland! Tell her there will be an assassination attempt on President Westwood during the fundraiser event today!’

For a moment, he thought he’d lost the call. Then, the operator’s voice came through.

‘Sir, you do realize threatening the president of the United States is a Class D felony offense which is punishable by a prison sentence and $250,000 fine—’ the woman said frostily.

‘Listen, lady, I’m not threatening the president, I’m trying to save his sorry ass!’ Conrad shouted. ‘Just get that message to Agent Hartwell! And let state and county law enforcement on the ground know that there’s an imminent threat!’

Chapter Seven

C
onrad disconnected, threw the phone onto the passenger seat, and dug inside his backpack until he found the envelope. His eyes moved to the speedometer; the SUV had just hit seventy miles per hour. He slammed his hand on the horn to clear the sluggish traffic in his path and emptied the contents of the envelope onto his lap.

His fingers had just closed over the encoded sheet with the haiku when a deafening sound thundered down the motorway and rattled his teeth.

Conrad looked up and saw that the Ford had crossed the centerline in the same instant that a red and silver eighteen-wheeler filled his view through the windshield. He swore and spun the steering wheel to the right.

The SUV clipped the edge of the truck’s bumper just as the rig’s driver started to brake.

The shriek of heavy tires roared in Conrad’s ears as he shot past the giant semi. He smelled burnt rubber and glanced in the side mirror in time to see the end of the trailer start to jackknife toward the concrete barrier of a flyover.

‘Oh shit,’ he whispered.

The truck wobbled, accelerated slightly, and finally corrected itself as the driver gradually steered the trailer out of the deadly angle. Air whooshed out of Conrad’s lips. He pinned the sheet with the cryptic lines to the steering wheel with one hand and peered at it briefly while he drove.

By the time he crossed the Anacostia River, he thought he had an idea what the cipher was. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in a position to decrypt it while traveling at eighty miles per hour.

Conrad tried to recall the little he knew of President Westwood. He had caught a glimpse of the man’s face on TV the year he was voted in as president, while he was on one of his rare outings to Rio. From what he’d gathered since, although Westwood’s popularity poll remained good with voters, it wasn’t so with Congress. This was because the new president was adamant that he was going to follow through with all the policy changes he had promised during his run for office, even if he had to, as he’d stated, “wade in the blood of the opposition” to do so. Conrad suspected Westwood was the kind of leader Victor Dvorsky would respect.

The buzz of rotors rose somewhere in the sky behind him. He looked in the side mirror and spotted a black police helicopter heading rapidly in his direction. His gaze shifted to the phone on the passenger seat. That the authorities had managed to locate the coordinates of the cell in such a short time was no small feat. He had their attention now.

He was about to throw the phone out the window when he stopped and frowned. The more cops he brought to the target site, the better it would act as a deterrent to the assassins.

Conrad got within two miles of the stadium before traffic started to pile up again. The SUV’s speed quickly dropped to under twenty miles per hour. The helicopter was now only a few thousand feet behind him and closing fast. Police sirens sounded in the distance.

He saw an exit ramp on the right, hit the horn in short, violent bursts, and forced his way across two lanes of crawling cars. The front wheels of the Ford hit the curb, and the vehicle climbed onto a path. Clods of earth and grass churned under the passenger side wheels as he headed down the embankment toward the slip road.