The Prisoner (34 page)

As the elevator doors closed silently, she smiled. “Why the fake British accent? You should try French. Last I heard, you were from Manitoba.”

“It gets me better tables at eateries. You should try it.”

Genia nodded once. Ritter knew. He could have been forewarned as she had, not by her source but by his own staff. But the most likely origin of his knowledge would have been a quick scan through the digest prepared by his round-the-clock press department as soon as he received Odelle’s summons.

After exiting the elevator at the executive floor and submitting to the routine body scan and the surrender of their weapons, George Wilson, Odelle Marino’s personal assistant—a fastidious middle-aged man with a slight limp and green eyes—ushered them through a long corridor onto a small rotunda with double doors flanked by a pair of oil paintings
depicting blurry seascapes. At the doors, George glanced at a small brass panel to one side and its slowly pulsing green light before sliding the panels open and stepping aside.

Genia nodded before striding in. Years before, she had studied Odelle’s bodyguard’s file: George Wilson, a full ex-colonel from the British SAS, untainted by the political loyalties besieging American personnel—a killing machine.

“This is unacceptable.” Odelle Marino stepped into the boardroom from her inner office and hurled a folded newspaper across the table. Then she marched to the head of the large oval table, slipped into a high-backed chair, and waved a hand for them to sit.

Genia reached for the newspaper. On the front page, tucked on the right-hand side of the headline announcing a major bomb scare in Paris, was a piece by Louis Hamilton, opening with a question:
Are our prisons as secure as we’ve been led to believe?
It was followed by a carefully worded article based on rumors not categorically denied by the FBH.

“Do we have any idea who leaked it?” Genia asked, careful to sound outraged but without overdoing it.

“I was hoping Mr. Ritter, your director of security, would be able to enlighten us,” Odelle said.

“I’m afraid not.” Ritter hadn’t glanced at the paper.

Odelle leaned forward. “You don’t seem surprised about the news, Mr. Ritter.”

“I’m not. I read the article an hour ago in the digest prepared by my press staff. It was predictable.”

“What was?”

“That sooner or later the press would get a whiff of something foul, in particular after the power station’s fireworks.”

“You call a terrorist attack at a nuclear installation ‘fireworks’?”

Ritter sighed and pursed his lips. Genia flinched; she knew his body language and guessed what was coming next.

“With all due respect, madam, although high explosives were used, other than tickling the trembler alarm switches of the station, the facility was never in any real danger. The charges were placed in the sewers a mile away, clinically
arranged so the blast would travel under the station and trip the alarms. Had the so-called terrorists wanted to inflict harm, they could have easily positioned the charges right under the reactor and probably fissured it. Then we would have had a major nuclear emergency on our hands. It’s my view that the explosions were part of an elaborate ruse to divert your forces so the fugitives could escape.”

“Where did you get that information?”

“It’s my job.”

“That was a direct question.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Marino.”

Odelle Marino placed both hands on the table and had started to rise when Genia felt compelled to intervene, inwardly cursing Ritter’s chutzpah. “He has a right to protect his sources. If such information is classified and an offense has been committed, Mr. Ritter will answer in writing on a documented request from your office.”

Odelle stood, eyes narrowed. When she spoke, her voice had dropped several decibels to slightly above a whisper. “I order you to tell me the source of that information at once.”

Ritter stepped away from the table and stood erect, his eyes on the door leading to Odelle’s inner office. “No, madam, I will do no such thing. Article 612, section four, paragraph two:
Executive personnel will not answer questions relating to security or classified issues but to the director of his agency, Congress, or the President
, and, to my knowledge, your office doesn’t qualify as any of those things.”

“How dare you?” Odelle turned slowly to face Genia. “I expect the source of that information on my desk within the hour, along with his resignation.”

Before Genia could answer, Ritter continued without having moved or shifted his gaze. “Director Warren can have the information and my resignation as soon as she sees fit to demand it.”

It had to happen. That it was happening so fast was further proof that Odelle was losing her cool. Her outburst was petty. Still, there were limits. “Ms. Marino, I beg you to reconsider,” Genia said. “The resignation of a senior officer in federal service must be served to his agency director with a
copy to the Congress’s permanent committee: article 163, section six, subsections two and three of the disciplinary code. Such a resignation must include the superior officer’s certification of the reason or reasons why such a resignation was tendered. No doubt Mr. Ritter will draft intent of personal reasons, but I am honor bound to add that the resignation was demanded by you because of his refusal to obey an illegal order.” She didn’t add that Ritter’s revelation painted an appalling picture of incompetence in the handling of the affair by the DHS. But Genia could swear Odelle had caught her drift.

In a chameleonic turnabout, Odelle Marino’s face relaxed and a faint smile curved her lips. “You’re right, of course. But this wretched episode will soon be over. Then I’m sure we’ll have a suitable opportunity to review this conversation.” Her face set. “That will be all, for now.”

In silence, Genia Warren and Lawrence Ritter collected their regulation weapons and communication pads from the security desk and headed for the elevator. As soon as the car doors closed, Ritter yanked off his beret and, in a movement too fast to follow, slapped the black beret over the surveillance camera, grabbed for Genia’s waist, and pulled her to him, kissing her with something close to ferocious urgency. Genia tried to gasp but only managed to accept his tongue. She could have reached for her piece or rammed a knee into his groin, but she did neither. Of its own accord, her hand moved to the nape of his neck, to bask in the fact that unconsciously she’d been dying to feel his smooth skin for ages. With the same haste, Ritter released her, grabbed his beret, slapped it on his head, and regained his habitual deadpan expression. Genia blinked, her breath coming out in hurried gasps, wondering if she’d imagined the whole episode. Her lips tingled. “What was that?” she breathed.

Ritter raised an eyebrow, a gesture that gave his face a curious Mephistophelian look, and whispered, “Heroic gestures have the strangest effect on me.”

At the parking lot, Ritter held the doors from closing and
leaned toward her as she squeezed past him. “She wasn’t alone. Someone was listening from her office.”

When Genia Warren and Lawrence Ritter left, Nikola Masek opened the connecting door between Odelle Marino’s office and boardroom and stepped through, inwardly aghast at her handling of Ritter. She was clearly outmatched. The man was a walking encyclopedia of rules, laws, and legislation.

She turned to face him. “Who leaked it to
The Post?”

“It could have been anyone.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I have the tape—a synthetic voice. Its identity is irrelevant, for the time being at least. But my bet is, whoever organized the escape leaked it to the press.”

“Why?”

“They’re losing their nerve or Russo has died or both.”

“And how did Ritter get accurate details of the explosion?”

Over the past few minutes, eavesdropping on Odelle’s careless display of brute force, Nikola had weighed what his answer should be to her predictable question. “Anybody could have given him that information, from within the DHS. More than two hundred operatives were involved, and he’s the director of security. Only an idiot would fail to judge that the explosion was meant to be all thunder and no damage. Anyway, disclosing the breakout was a rash move, and a welcome one; it will spare me the hassle of feeding the breakout to the press myself.”

Silence.

Nikola sighed. “We made a gross mistake in keeping the escape under wraps. In retrospect, it’s obvious that the linchpin of their plan was our predictability. They wagered we would keep the lid down and we fell for it.”

“Why do you keep using the plural? It was your call.”

“No, it wasn’t. You insisted the damage had to be contained.”

“Would you have acted differently if I hadn’t demanded discretion?”

“I wouldn’t; that’s why I use the plural. But it was a mistake;
it limited our resources and the scope of our response. In an all-out hunt, we would have drawn in the police and the army. After sealing the city and flushing the sewers, these bastards would have been history.”

“Inside job?”

“You mean the government?”

She nodded.

“It would seem likely. At least, someone very high up.”

“What would you do?”

Her choice of pronoun was telling.
You
, not
we
. Nikola sighed, his resolve strengthening. “Everything hinges on Russo. Is he alive? Is he coherent? The stakes are too high to ignore the possibility, however remote, that the answer to one or both questions could be yes. Without an insider’s help, your chances of impeding eventual disclosure are almost nil.” He raised a hand to forestall her comment. “I know you can probably cover your tracks as if nothing ever happened, or at least try to.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know the details, but it’s a matter of respect.” Or the lack of it. That was the crux of the issue. “I would have made sure I could, and I have no reason to doubt you’ve not considered the eventuality.”

“You mentioned insider’s help.”

That Odelle still kept part of her brain, regardless of her drowning thrashes, gave Nikola a glimmer of hope that she would remain predictable. “By elimination, your possible sources are limited to one. Forget about the idealistically committed; you can’t bribe them. But there are a few mercenaries involved, and a large chunk of money may sway their loyalty. Among the hired help, there’s someone with a face and name: Lukas Hurley. I doubt you can tempt him with money. If he’s dead, he doesn’t need it, and if not, he has too much already. But his honeypot is another matter. The fool joined the fray to bankroll a future with his Peruvian princess.” He darted a glance at his timepiece, nodded once, and stepped toward the door. “I have a flight to catch. Can we meet this evening? I will have most of the information you’re seeking by then.”

She stared at him fixedly before pursing her lips and nodding. “Nine o’clock. Can you make it then?”

“I’ll try.”

09:51

Adaptation, a trait shared by the San and Inuit alike, underlies success in otherwise harrowing environments. After a nap on his way to the Air Force base, a simple breakfast of cereal, juice, and tea while he waited for the pilot to ready his machine, a short flight from Washington to Chicago, and a pleasant drive to Kenosha—across the state border in Wisconsin—Nikola felt ready to tackle his next call.

Running the DNA of everyone involved in the Washington, D.C., sugar-cube fiasco through the federal database would have saved him many hours of painstakingly collating details and reading files, but it wouldn’t have solved the riddle. It was now clear what the connection was between Laurel, Eliot Russo, and Araceli Goldberg. Yet the mystery remained, and Araceli’s past was a good next place to search.

After collecting his rented car from the airport—an almost-new Kioshi Matador—Nikola drove north on Route 45 to Miner Street and then took 94 past Skokie Boulevard to the coastal road bordering Lake Michigan. Soon, the smoke of chimneys from another era, stretched and torn against a gray sky, became part of the fleecy canopy that hung over the lake and the fields.

Martha and Vance Brownell, the subjects at his next port of call, were different animals from the Coles—a similar phylum but a different class. In the ever-changing social tapestry of civilization’s third millennium, class was no longer
determined by birth, upbringing, or even money but by power—the age-old currency of rulers.

On the flight, eyes closed to ward off any attempt at conversation from a major sharing the cabin, he’d mulled the nature of power. Many years before, when Nikola still harbored hopes of redeeming humanity, a disenchanted political science professor and itinerant lecturer, Marcus Lassiter, had spoken to an audience of young people eager to discover the ways of the world. Power, Professor Lassiter had reflected, was about change, about forcing others to do what they would never have done of their own accord. And, like everything about our wretched species, change had its own mechanics. After reaching for his glass of water and moving it about without raising it to his lips, Lassiter had gone on to explain that the mechanics of change revolved around three tools: love, money, and fear.