Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (193 page)

“Good luck with that, you idiot,” she muttered.

It was insufferable that she was in this position at all. She was a patriot. She had almost single-handedly engineered the most lucrative U.S. foreign policy initiative ever. What would it do to rid the U.S. of independence on Middle Eastern oil? Stripped of their stranglehold on the American economy, the whole lot of them could go off and have towel fights with their turbans for all she cared. Well, when all the details were out, the cowards who failed to follow-through with her Namibian foreign policy would pay the price in public opinion. Maybe when she’d had a chance to tell her side, her political fortunes would more than rebound.
She
might be the one running for President in the next election.

It was Markov who was the traitor, betraying top secret U.S. intelligence to the media. He would pay for that. She would see to it personally.

Getting out of the hotel would be the easy part. With so many dignitaries and other celebrities as guests, the hotel had multiple exits from the underground parking garage, some of them ingeniously designed to pop out on the far side of the block, via some other business’s parking. They’d whisk her away in a car with darkened windows and the media would never know the difference.

Facing the President in the Oval Office would be the hard part. He would demand Sarah’s resignation, no doubt with the plan to scapegoat her for the whole debacle, depending on how badly the Namibian situation blew up in their faces.

She could fend that off, too, but it would help if she had access to her personal computer. She needed her special files, with all of her notes collected over the years. Leverage. A career in military intelligence had no end of leverage.

A man wasn’t born President, after all. He spent decades climbing, kicking aside rivals, screwing beautiful women who were not his wife. Whatever wired a man’s brain to seek that kind of power also left him a thrill-seeker that often manifested itself in sexual conquest. This President was no exception.

Her personal files had details that may shock even the President with their specificity. Perhaps encourage him to look elsewhere for his scapegoat. Such as Anton Markov. Oh, that would be cruel justice.

A knock at the door disturbed her from the pleasant thought of revenge. She turned, startled.

“Who is it?”

“Ms. Redd? They sent me to pick you up.”

“Okay, just a second!”

Sarah ran her fingers through her hair, straightened her clothes. Too bad she couldn’t do anything about her makeup, at least cover the bags under her eyes. No choice in the matter, unfortunately.

She stepped up to the door and looked through the peep hole just to be sure. There was a secret service agent in a suit and with dark glasses outside her room. He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot and spoke into a headset that curved down from his ear. Looked like they’d sent one man so as not to alarm her, but no doubt a full team spread throughout the hotel and the parking garage, in case she tried anything stupid. No worries there.

Sarah unbolted the various locks and opened the door. The man stepped inside. To her surprise, he pulled the headset out of his ear and tossed it to the floor. Belatedly, she saw that it was not a secret service issue headset at all, but nothing more than bits of styrofoam and a plastic straw, cut, stuck together, and colored with a black marker.

On closer inspection, the man’s suit looked curiously out of date, either retro or some old thing taken from the back of the closet. His face was pale and there were razor cuts on his face, as if he’d shaved without a mirror. Too late, she recognized him and drew back with a terrified shudder. He was already shutting the door and bolting it behind him.

“Oh, my God, it’s you.”

The man smiled. “Hello Annalisa, or rather, Sarah Redd.”

He took a step toward her and she shrank back, toward the window, thinking furiously. There was nothing in here to defend herself; she’d looked already. And the privacy demands of the hotel meant this was the sort of building where screams didn’t carry. Could she get to the window, get a message somehow to the reporters down there?

“How did you get in here?”

“Trivially easy,” he said. “I won’t bore you with details, but anyone could have done it.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know why. It’s the only thing I can’t figure out. Why? Why you did this to me, after everything. After everything!” His voice grew high, excited and there was an insane glint in his eyes.

She took another step backwards, but he took two steps and now he was standing very close indeed. Her back pressed against the wall, against the steel reinforced, extra thick wall built for safety and privacy.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, for God’s sake.”

“Do you remember that time we took a picnic on the banks of the Seine, about fifty kilometers out of Paris?”

“Yes, yes, I remember.” She seized on the lifeline. “It was a beautiful day, we watched the barges and you bought a bouquet of flowers from that
fleuriste.
”

His eyes took a faraway look. “
Ah, oui. C’etait un tres belle jour.
What a beautiful day. The camembert, that bottle of Bordeaux.
You.
Maybe the most beautiful day of my life.”

“Remember the swans?” Sarah forced a laugh. “Came up and snatched the baguette while we weren’t paying attention.” Her breathing came quickly, the words in a jumble as they came out of her mouth.

He gave her a knowing smile. “We were too busy to notice the swans, weren’t we, my dear? You wore that sun dress and no bra, just like a
Parisienne
on picnic. I wanted you so badly, I didn’t care if anyone came by and saw. I can still feel the breeze, smell your hair, with that scent of lavender from your shampoo. The feel of your skin under my hands, your breasts, your panties, damp with desire as I peeled them off…” A sigh.

It had been a beautiful moment; that was for sure. Mingled with regret, of course, since she’d known all along that they would come for him that night, now that she’d identified his flat, and carry him away, tranquilized, with a sack over his head. He’d never see daylight again.

The poor fool had never suspected a thing. And yet, here he was.

“But how did you…?” She stopped herself, knowing at once that it was a mistake. She needed him to talk about Paris, needed him to remember that moment, not the ten years following.

“Funny, I never even suspected,” he said. “All that time in the cell, trying to figure out who the Fer-de-Lance could have been, never once did I think it could be you. Not one time. But someone would know. Someone in Washington. I just needed to find the right person, absorb his or her memories.

“As soon as I got out, I went to a library, got on their computer,” he continued. “Amazing how much search engines have changed in the last ten years. There were pictures of the Director of National Intelligence all over the web. My God, it was you. The only thing left is to figure out why.”

“I’ll tell you everything, I swear. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“Of course you will,” he said. “But maybe not in the way you think.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small tool with a toothed metal disk on the end.

“What’s that?” she asked in a near scream.

“It’s a Stryker saw, for autopsies. Cuts right through bone.”

She tried to push past him, run for the door, but he caught her by the hair. He swung her around, toward the bed. She sprawled over the mattress and then tried to regain her balance and scramble away. But he was on top of her. With greater strength than she could have thought possible, he flipped her over to face him.

“No, James. No!”

“My name isn’t James,” he said in an unnaturally calm voice as the Stryker saw whirred into action with a horrible buzzing sound. “My name is Joe Kilroy, and I eat brains.”

________

Terrance Nolan had two bags, one with a few personal effects and changes of clothes, hastily gathered, and the other stuffed with cash.

One hundred thousand dollars, to be exact. A pitiful sum, but it would have to do. So much for the fantasy of retiring to his own private island, serviced by a fleet of helicopters and a staff of young females from all over the world, each one with perkier nipples than the last.

He stood in the hallway and couldn’t help but give a final glance over his shoulder, at the living room, at the woods behind the floor-to-ceiling windows. This place had seemed cramped for months now. Looked pretty good at the moment.

Terrance was on his way to some Third World shithole; he wasn’t sure where yet. Slink away, take on a false identity. His hundred thousand would disappear in a blink, if he wasn’t careful. He had to figure out some way to make it last. Quietly buy a piece of property on a beach somewhere in Malaysia or maybe Sri Lanka, develop it.

The whole stupid thing had collapsed. One minute, dreaming about living large like Malcolm Hathwell, his own private island. The next, he was taking calls from reporters. He told them nothing, but no matter. It was clear the press already knew about the collapsed investment scheme, his involvement in the rapidly developing mess in Namibia. If they knew, the CIA would at best be a step behind. He had to get the hell out of here.

Terrance turned, reluctantly, from the house that suddenly seemed like home, with all that entailed. From the home he’d shared with a wife who suddenly seemed comforting, forgiving, rather than cold and self-centered. He stepped through the front door, onto the porch, with the glum feeling he would never see this place again. Well, at least it couldn’t get any worse. He’d hit bottom and his life could only improve from here.

“On the ground! NOW!”

Two men stood on either side of the porch, dressed in black flak jackets with shotguns. Vans and black Lincoln Town Cars filled the driveway. A dozen other members of the CIA SWAT team took positions with drawn guns around the yard.

His legs dropped out from under him. And then they were on him, kicking away his luggage, patting down his legs, cuffing his hands and ankles, lifting him off the ground to drag from the porch and toward one of the waiting cars.

His life, apparently,
could
get worse.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The aftermath of the battle resolved itself quickly. By the time Julia left the Windhoek State Hospital, calm had returned to the capital.

She hadn’t left the hospital for three days, performing surgeries she had no business undertaking, because there was no one better to handle the onslaught. She stopped bleeding from pelvis fractures, pulled bullets from lungs, fused fractured vertebrae in spines, some of the procedures she hadn’t performed since her trauma surgery rotation from her surgical internship more than a decade earlier.

Eventually the cases became less urgent, more complex. Amputations for gangrene in infected limbs. Set broken bones in civilians who slowly trickled into the hospital, long after the CIS and Blackwing contractors had already been treated for much less serious injuries. There was one orthopedist on staff in the hospital who scrubbed in with her on the first few amputations, but she found herself constantly correcting his sterile technique, and began doing cases on her own, running two operating rooms side by side. A week later, the hospital was still full, but the load was manageable.

Even before the shooting ended, news crews had descended on Namibia. Julia gave an interview to the BBC, and another to Al Jazeera, but only as a doctor who happened to be in Namibia during the coup attempt. She described the fighting in generic terms, her hospital work in specific, but said nothing about her personal involvement.

Ian pulled his forces progressively out of Windhoek, as he’d promised Charles Ikanbo. Forty-eight hours after the battle at the palace, Blackwing was on its way back to the Ondjamba camp. CIA agent Steve Billups returned to the States for debriefing, but Ian and Julia stayed in Windhoek while Markov sorted out the mess in Washington. He promised he’d have them officially rehabilitated and home as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Julia kept working at the hospital, which was glad to have her. Ian returned to Ondjamba to recover Kendall’s body and escort it home for burial.