The Joshua Stone

by James Barney

  Ana did her best to keep track of what was going on around her. She knew she could still collect valuable intelligence in this situation. In fact, she’d been specifically trained to do just that.

  A man nearby was speaking English with a heavy Slavic accent. “Tell me what this is,” he demanded.

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know,” said a second man in American English. Ana deduced that this was probably the carjacker from Thurmond. Malachi.

  Suddenly, there was the sound of a vicious slap, and the American man grunted in agony.

  “You are Malachi, are you not?” asked the first man.

  “Yes. I already told you that.”

  “Then answer my question. Tell me what this is!”

  There were several seconds of silence followed by another brutal slap and the sounds of a man grunting in extreme pain.

  “Give me that,” said a third man. Ana recognized his voice as that of the Russian who had struck her with his gun. She deduced that he must be the leader of this group of thugs. She heard the sound of rustling paper being transferred from one hand to another. So the thing they are asking about is on a sheet of paper.

  “These men are going to kill you if you don’t answer their questions,” said the Russian. “Do you understand that? Good. Now, I can help you avoid that fate, but only if you cooperate with me.”

  Good cop, bad cop, Ana thought. A classic interrogation technique, and one of the most effective.

  “I understand you don’t recognize this exact drawing,” said the Russian. “But have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  “I don’t know,” said the American man after a pause. “Maybe.”

  “When?”

  “A long time ago . . . with her.”

  “Who? The woman you met at the church today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Opal.”

  “And what did she tell you about the twelve stones shown in this sketch?”

  “I . . . I don’t remember anything about twelve stones. I swear.”

  The Russian sighed. “I can’t help you if you won’t help me.”

  There was some jostling as the men apparently repositioned themselves in the back of the van. Then, suddenly, there was another brutal slap, and the American man cried out in agony.

  Moments later, Ana felt her own head being lifted up and her body being rudely dragged across the floor of the van. Someone grabbed her beneath her arms and propped her up into a sitting position against the side of the van. She could feel the bite of sticky duct tape around her wrists and over her mouth. Then, suddenly, she felt the warmth of another person’s face next to her own. She heard heavy breathing and could feel hot breath on her ear. She could see just a bit of flesh color through her hood.

  “You’re next,” whispered the Russian man into her ear. His voice was sinister, and tinged with a kind of sadistic pleasure that made her skin crawl.

  41

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The Black Chevy Tahoe barreled down Sixteenth Street like a freight train with Mike Califano at the wheel. In the past ten minutes, it had been photographed no fewer than three times by red-light cameras as Califano blew through intersection after intersection with little more than a tap on the brakes. He didn’t care. He had to catch that white van.

  “I don’t see it,” he barked into his microphone as he scanned every cross street he passed. “Any idea where it went?”

  The voice of Steve Goodwin came on the line a moment later. “Mike. This is Steve. I’m taking over for Dr. McCreary because he had to step out.”

  “All right, big guy. Tell me where that white van went.”

  “I’m looking at raw feeds from all the DHS cameras in the district. Just give me another minute.”

  “Dude, I’m doing seventy. In a minute, I’ll be in Maryland.”

  “Okay, I got it,” said Goodwin after a few seconds. “A white van matching the description just passed Connecticut westbound on M. You’re going the wrong way.”

  Shit. Califano immediately slammed on the brakes and maneuvered the bulky Tahoe through a squealing U-turn in the intersection of Sixteenth and T Streets. Two minutes later, he swerved sharply onto M Street, heading west. “All right, I’m on M Street now.” He was doing his best to swerve through traffic, which was much heavier on M Street than it had been on Sixteenth. He finally reached the intersection of M and Connecticut Avenue and stopped abruptly at a red light. He scanned the intersection in all directions but saw no white vans. “Should I keep going straight?”

  “Stand by,” said Goodwin calmly. “I’ve got all the DHS cameras west of Connecticut, and I’ve seen nothing in Foggy Bottom. Nothing on Constitution. Nothing on E Street. Nothing on any of the bri— Wait, here we go.” Goodwin paused for a moment. “Okay, I just saw a white van heading westbound on K, going down into the tunnel beneath Washington Circle. Looks like it’s heading toward the Whitehurst Freeway.”

  Califano thought about the Whitehurst Freeway for a moment. As he recalled, it was a limited-access road throughout its entire stretch through Georgetown—no on-ramps or off-ramps. “Steve,” he said quickly. “Call the metro police and have them block off Whitehurst where it intersects with Canal Road. We can trap them there.”

  “Will do,” said Goodwin.

  Califano cut the wheel left and screeched onto Twenty-first Street southbound. Two blocks later, he hit the brakes and banked a hard right onto K Street. He accelerated and the Tahoe lurched down into the tunnel that stretched about a hundred and fifty yards beneath Washington Circle. Seeing that the tunnel was clear ahead, Califano gunned the accelerator, and the Tahoe’s powerful engine responded with a roar. At nearly sixty miles per hour, however, Califano suddenly saw brake lights ahead, just beyond the tunnel exit. Oh shit. Red light.

  Califano swerved into the eastbound lane just as the Tahoe emerged from the Washington Circle tunnel with its wheels slightly off the ground and whizzed by a line of stopped cars at Twenty-sixth and K. That’s when he saw the oncoming delivery truck heading straight toward him in the eastbound lane, blasting its horn. Crap! He instinctively cut the wheel to the right, missing the truck by inches and narrowly avoiding the last of the stopped cars on his right. Two seconds later, the Tahoe careened up an on-ramp and onto the elevated Whitehurst Freeway. Califano slowed the vehicle and let out a relieved breath. Damn, that was close. He activated his microphone. “Steve, I’m on the Whitehurst now.”

  “Roadblock should be in place,” said Goodwin. “They just got there.”

  The elevated Whitehurst Freeway cut straight through the tony waterfront section of Georgetown, running parallel to the Potomac River about a hundred feet from the water’s edge. This drove Georgetowners crazy because it blocked their view of the river. In fact, they had petitioned for decades to get the Whitehurst torn down. But that was never going to happen. Not as long as it provided an easy commuting route for certain politicians and the well-heeled denizens who lived just upriver in Palisades and in the close-in suburbs of Virginia and Maryland.

  Califano brought the Tahoe to an abrupt halt behind two lanes of stopped vehicles. The roadblock. He jumped out and began sprinting toward Canal Road along the concrete barrier on the left-hand side of the freeway. He unholstered his pistol as he ran, drawing incredulous looks from a few drivers inside their stopped vehicles. As the pavement began sloping down toward Canal Road, Califano could now see the blue flashing lights of the roadblock ahead.

  And there it was.

  Three vehicles back from the roadblock on the left-hand side of the freeway was a Ford E-350 van—white, just like the description of the van that had been spotted near the church. That had to be it. Califano slowed his pace and approached the van carefully. As he did, he saw two armed D.C. policemen approaching from the other side. “Mike Califano,” he shouted to them. “CIA.”

  The cops nodded but didn’t look terribly impressed. One of them signaled for Califan
o to stay back. He complied. Let’s just see how this goes, he figured. With his pistol still drawn, he watched from about thirty feet away as one of the cops carefully opened the driver’s-side door with his gun drawn. He appeared to be giving the driver an order. A moment later, the driver got out of the van.

  Right away, Califano could tell something was wrong. The driver was short and Hispanic looking, and he was wearing cargo shorts and a white T-shirt. None of the thugs back at the church looked anything like that. He continued watching with concern as the cop frisked the man and placed him in handcuffs against the van. No, no, no. This was all wrong.

  Califano quickly changed positions so he could see the other side of the van. The cop on the other side had another man in handcuffs. He, too, was Hispanic and dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and a painter’s cap.

  Califano shook his head and began approaching the vehicle, ignoring what the police officer had told him to do.

  “Stay back, sir,” said the cop on the passenger side.

  Califano kept walking. “I’m with the CIA. I’m the one who ordered this roadblock.”

  The cop eyed Califano suspiciously and trained his pistol on him. “Stay back.”

  Califano ignored the cop and continued walking straight toward the van until he reached the cargo door on the passenger side. He hesitated just a moment before pulling hard on the handle and sliding the door wide open.

  Empty.

  The only contents of the van were a few paint cans, some paint-spattered tarps, and a small stepladder.

  Shit! Wrong van.

  “Who are you?” whispered the Russian man into Ana Thorne’s ear.

  She was sitting with her back against the side of a moving vehicle, with her hands and feet bound, mouth taped shut, and the opaque hood still over her head. She could tell the vehicle was out of the city now, traveling fast on a relatively smooth highway with light traffic. She tried to speak but could only manage to vibrate her voice box. “Mmmmph. Mmm. Mmmmph.”

  Suddenly there was light as the man pulled off her hood. Ana winced and quickly looked all around, taking stock of her situation. The Russian man was beside her, to the right. Another goon in a tracksuit was sitting across from her, leering at her with some sort of stupid grin. The driver and three other men were in front. And the man they called Malachi was on the floor in the middle of the cargo section, with his feet and hands bound tightly with duct tape. His face was bruised and swollen, and a mixture of blood and saliva was drooling out of his mouth, forming a frothy pool of red on the van floor. For a moment, he caught her gaze and held it. He looked confused . . . and terrified.

  The Russian man grabbed one edge of the tape covering Ana’s mouth and ripped it off in one cruel motion.

  “Ow!” Ana shouted as the adhesive tape pulled painfully away from her skin.

  “Ready to talk now?” asked Vladamir Krupnov as he squatted down in front of her.

  Ana stared back impassively.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ana Thorne,” she said flatly, in accordance with CIA protocol.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “U.S. Department of State,” she replied without hesitation. This, too, was in accordance with standard CIA protocol. Her default employer was always the State Department. In fact, if anyone had ever bothered to check, they would have found a complete employment file on her at the State Department, including W-2s, performance evaluations, and even an EEOC complaint against a previous supervisor who’d harassed her. All fake, of course.

  Krupnov was quiet for a while, apparently weighing her answer. “State Department, hmm?”

  Ana shrugged. “That’s where I work.”

  Krupnov snorted and curled his lips into a crooked smile. With the back of his hand, he gently stroked her cheek and allowed his hand to drift slowly down her neck, stopping at the scarred region just below her ear. “What’s this?” He clucked his tongue several times. “What a shame.” His hand continued drifting downward along the curves of her body until it reached her inner thigh, where it rested for several seconds. He leaned in close and whispered into her ear, “Young lady, if you don’t start telling me the truth, this is going to get very, very messy.”

  Ana swallowed hard but said nothing.

  Krupnov’s face remained close to Ana’s ear for several seconds. She could hear him inhaling deeply, apparently savoring the aroma of her hair. Then he suddenly pushed back and retrieved a folded piece of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it and held it up for her to see. It appeared to be a photocopy of a tattered notebook page containing a crude sketch of some sort of building with twelve circles in a rectangular box, ten of which were grouped together with dashed lines. There was some German writing scrawled beneath the sketch.

  Ana stared at the drawing and did her best to conceal her surprise. She’d seen something almost identical at Tom Reynolds’s house.

  “Do you recognize this?” asked Krupnov. He studied her eyes closely as he awaited her response.

  “No,” she lied.

  Krupnov did not react at first. Finally, after a long pause, he exhaled loudly and turned to the thug behind him, who still had the same stupid grin on his face. “Vascha Cherga,” he said with a shrug.

  Your turn.

  Mike Califano returned to his vehicle and tapped the button for his microphone. “Steve,” he said emphatically. “Get these guys to clear this roadblock now. They won’t listen to me for some reason.”

  “On it,” said Goodwin.

  As Califano waited impatiently for the roadblock to clear, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and speed-dialed Admiral Armstrong. He pressed the phone to his ear but heard no ringing for several seconds. Then he held the phone up and saw that he had no service. What the hell? He tapped his microphone again. “Hey, Steve. Can you patch me through to Admiral Armstrong? My phone’s not working.”

  “Stand by,” said Goodwin. A few seconds later, he came back on the line. “By the way, that roadblock should be clearing now.”

  Good. At least one of us has some pull around here.

  As the traffic began to inch forward, Admiral Armstrong came on the line. “Armstrong,” he said curtly.

  “Admiral. It’s Mike Califano. I was wondering if you could have your satellite boys help us find a white van that left the city about fifteen minutes ago. I know there’ll be a ton of them on the road, but maybe they can help narrow it down somehow.” He paused and exhaled. “I think they have Ana.”

  “I wish I could help, Mike. But we’re having a crisis of our own here. Have you been listening to the news?”

  “Uh, no. I’ve been kind of busy.”

  “Satellites are all out of sync. GPS, civilian, and all of ours, too. Some sort of problem with the master clock.”

  Of course, Califano thought. “The master clock’s at the Naval Observatory. That’s about two miles from the Hay-Adams.”

  “So?”

  “I saw a bright flash there about twenty minutes ago. Just like the one we saw in the White Sea.”

  “Twenty minutes ago, you say? Yep, makes sense. Damn. If it screwed up the master clock even half a second, that would wreak havoc with our satellites. Is someone looking into it?”

  By now, the traffic on the Whitehurst Freeway was moving swiftly. “Dr. McCreary’s on it,” said Califano.

  “Oh, that makes me feel a lot better,” Armstrong muttered. “Look, I gotta go. Good luck.”

  Califano shook his head as he accelerated the Tahoe forward. Seconds later, he passed the police car at the bottom of the off-ramp and turned left onto Canal Road. Time to regroup. He eased the Tahoe up to cruising speed and glanced momentarily at the gravel towpath of the C&O Canal whizzing by on his left, where mules once pulled canal boats into the city two centuries before. He turned on the Tahoe’s radio and quickly found a news station. A man with a deep voice was in the middle of a rambling broadcast:

  . . . appears to be a worldwide outage. Anyone who has GPS in their
car or on their mobile phone or tablet computer will probably notice that they’re not able to acquire any satellite signals. Many cellular phone networks also appear to be down. And again, this appears to be a worldwide problem. We’re getting reports now that airports are suspending flights until further notice. FAA regulations require a functioning GPS, so, until the system comes back, all commercial flights are temporarily grounded. Once again, we are reporting a major, worldwide disruption in the global positioning system and other critical satellites. We will continue to keep you updated after this short commercial message . . .

  Califano turned down the volume and shook his head. Jesus. It was amazing what a little slippage in time could do. No wonder Dr. McCreary was so adamant about preventing this technology from falling into the wrong hands.

  His thoughts quickly shifted back to the white van . . . and Ana Thorne. They were taking her somewhere. But where? Likely somewhere close by, or at least within driving distance. He wished he had his data-mining program available to him right now. At least that would save him a trip back to CIA headquarters—valuable time that he could not afford to lose right now.

  He tapped the transmit button. “Hey, Steve? Have you ever used my data-mining program?”

  “No,” said Goodwin. “Only Dr. McCreary’s.”

  “Looks like today’s your lucky day.”

  42

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Bill McCreary was staring down at the bloody corpse of a man who was slumped awkwardly against a trash bin with two bullet holes in his chest. Califano’s work, no doubt. Looking up, he once again scanned the service courtyard behind the Hay-Adams hotel for the vertical shaft that was supposed to be here, the one that provided access to the fallout shelter beneath the Third Church of Christ, Scientist. Where is it? He’d already circled the courtyard once with no success, and he was just about to do so again when he suddenly realized what he’d been overlooking the whole time.