“Well, whoever he is, he is one hell of a guy and I hope some day I can shake his hand…. So the bottom line is, right now, you are to be the secure line of communication between Mr. ‘Ferguson’ and my department. Which tells me something I am very unhappy to hear.”
“What is that, Captain?”
“It tells me that Washington doesn’t trust my department. It tells me that my department is leaking to somebody. It tells me that I have a mole in my department who is sharing information — not with the enemy, as far as I can tell, but with the FBI.”
“And is that a bad thing? I thought that the whole point of learning from 9/11 was that there shouldn’t be walls between… between, you know, all those agencies.”
“This is one wall that needs to stay in place, for a lot of reasons,” replied Byrne. He paused a moment to collect himself, trying to decide exactly how much to tell the attractive woman sitting across the desk from him. He decided to tell her everything; a world of deception was not something the country could afford at this moment.
“Mrs. Gardner—”
“Hope.”
“Hope, we have very strong reason to believe that there is a nuclear device hidden somewhere in the Mount Sinai Medical Center uptown.” He watched her carefully for a reaction. Nothing. Good. “In fact, information has just come to light that means were are certain of it. This bomb, based on the telephoned warnings we’ve received, is set to go off within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and my detectives, members of the NYPD bomb squad, and personnel from the Atomic Energy Commission are all on the site. I will do my damnedest not to put you in any danger, but I want to be very clear with you that it can’t be ruled out.”
“You mean the bomb could go off. What would happen then?”
“Depending on the yield — and mind you, we’re not certain the technology really exists to fashion such a device; for all we know, it may just be a dirty bomb, although a very dangerous one — it could destroy the Upper East Side and render much of the island of Manhattan uninhabitable for a hundred years. There would be a tremendous loss of life.”
“I understand.”
“And worse — yes, there is a ‘worse’—it would completely panic the country. After 9/11 we still had some spunk although, if you want my opinion, we reacted in exactly the wrong way. Instead of cowering, and rushing to assure the Muslim world we meant it no harm, and putting a bunch of Muslim-looking bylines in the New York Times, we should have taken the fight right overseas — not to Afghanistan, who gives a shit about Afghanistan, but right to Saudi Arabia, where we should have deposed the royal family and taken the Saudi oil fields into protective custody, to preserve the supply of energy for all the world. Wait, I’m not finished.
“Instead of treating our own people like potential terrorists every time they get on an airplane, we should have shut down immigration from the Middle East, expelled all the ‘students’ from that region until they could be vetted, and cut off all travel and technology to the Islamic countries — thrown a cordon sanitaire around them until they learned to act like civilized human beings. And then allowed them to kill each other until they had sorted themselves out and were ready to play nice with the rest of the world again. If ever. That way, your kids could get on a plane and not be pawed by the TSA gorillas, OPEC would have been broken, and we — especially we here in New York — could resume our lives without fear.”
Hope looked at him in amazement. She’d never heard anybody talk like this.
“Now you see why I’ll never be elected president,” said Byrne, rising. “Do you think you can handle a trip uptown, have a look around?”
“Of course, Captain.”
“Great. Now, how are you going to communicate with Mr. ‘Ferguson’?”
“Danny. His name is Danny. Danny Impellatieri. With this.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out something that looked like a stripped-down smartphone and showed it to Byrne. “They told me it was a prototype, a direct line to him, totally secure.”
“And I’m sure they’re right. Now put that thing away and don’t let anybody see you using it. There are a couple of people at the hospital you need to meet.”
They got into one of the secure blacked-out cars in the basement. “I’m sorry to have to do this, but it’s for your own protection.”
“I’ve seen New York already, Captain,” said Hope.
The ride uptown was uneventful. They went in through the hospital’s VIP entrance on Madison.
But it didn’t matter. She was right there, as Byrne halffeared.
“Hello, Captain Byrne,” said Principessa. Byrne looked around. She was alone — no team, no cameras, no sound guys. “Don’t worry, I won’t bite.” She gave Hope the onceover. “Who’s your date?”
“Knock it off, Ms. Stanley,” said Byrne.
“It’s the same guy, isn’t it? Archibald Grant and this ghost you’re chasing. The guy who saved me… and the guy who saved you, too… Am I right?”
She really was much smarter than she looked.
“I’m afraid I’m busy just now, Ms. Stanley.”
“Principessa.”
“Whatever. Call my office and we’ll talk later.”
She blocked the way. She was a big, healthy girl who had long since learned how to use that body of hers as a weapon. She got close to him, dropped her voice. “What’s going on, Frankie? And who’s the dame?”
“What, do you think you’re in a road-company version of His Girl Friday? Gimme a break and let me do my job, lady.”
“I’m just trying to do mine. We ought to be on the same team, Captain. The Archibald Grant team.”
“Who’s Archibald Grant?” asked Hope, innocently. Byrne cringed. Principessa Stanley was like a shark, and she always headed toward the blood in the water.
“He’s a fake,” she said. “A character, a joker, who poses as a bigdome while saving the world in his spare time. He’s Batman and Superman combined and, you know… when you get him out from underneath that makeup and that fat suit, he’s probably hell on the ladies. Except that I gather he has a girlfriend, so I guess we’re both out of luck.”
There had been a woman in the car. A real babe. That’s what Sam Raclette had told her after he recovered from the car crash in New Orleans. She had paid Raclette to follow Grant after the RAND lecture in the Crescent City. Exactly what had happened to him when he was tailing a car with a man and a woman in it he wasn’t exactly sure, except that all of a sudden his car flipped over under the Pontchartrain Expressway and that was the last thing he remembered until he woke up in Charity Hospital.
“Come on, Captain. You know who he is, don’t you? You can tell me. I need something to take back to my boss, Jake Sinclair.”
Byrne took Hope by the arm and started walking. “Jake Sinclair is the last man on earth I’d want to help. So why don’t you run back to him like a good little girl and tell him mean old Francis Byrne won’t give you a thing.”
Byrne stopped and turned around. “What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked. He knew she was a good newswoman, so something must have brought her here. He said a silent prayer that it didn’t have anything to do with his case, but in his heart, it knew it did.
“I got a tip,” she said coyly. She took a step or two backward. Make him come to her, now that she had his attention.
He bit. “What kind of a tip?”
“That some big shot was coming up from Washington on a national-security case. I figured I’d show up and say hello.”
Byrne let go of Hope and walked back to Principessa. He dropped his voice. “I ought to rip that fucking wig right off your head. You know something, tell me.”
“Oooh, trying to scare the little girl,” mocked Principessa. The chick had balls, he had to give her that. She’d taken just about the worst that Raymond Crankheit threw at her and had survived. She wasn’t about to be intimidated by him.
Whether she was or was not, however, was immediately r
endered moot as a taxi pulled up in the underground driveway. Byrne knew instantly who it was. The last person on earth he wanted to see.
A man got out of the car. Principessa sashshayed over to him — that really was the only word to describe her motion — and greeted him with a kiss as he got out. “Look who’s here,” she said, indicating Byrne and Hope Gardner.
He let out a short, barking laugh. “Old home week. Hello, Frankie,” said Tom Byrne, deputy director of the FBI.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Baku — Tehran
If there really was such a thing as a controlled purple rage, thought Mlle. Derrida as their plane taxied along the runway, Emanuel Skorzeny was managing it. The news of Amanda Harrington’s defection had not surprised her in the least. She had warned him, but he would not listen. Men were such fools around women, which is why she could never love a man.
She sat near him, in case he wanted company. The 707 was always ready to leave at a moment’s notice, and everything went smoothly. All they had to do was file a flight plan and get landing permission from the Iranian authorities and they were on their way. It cost one of Skorzeny’s shell companies a fortune to keep his personal plane in a constant state of readiness, but what did it matter? He could just manipulate another currency or indulge in some other arcane aspect of international high finance and the expense would be covered.
“Don’t say anything,” he said to her.
“I didn’t.”
They flew in silence for a while. Maryam’s computer lay closed on the table in front of him. Mlle. Derrida wished she had a book.
“Confound your damnable silence,” he said.
She took that as a cue. “Would you care for some music, sir?”
“When I want music, I shall ask for it.’
“Then what do you want?”
“I want your opinion.” That almost never happened.
“May I ask in regard to what, M. Skorzeny?”
“Regarding what? Regarding what just happened? How did she do it? Why? I am both troubled and puzzled at the perfidy of women, Mlle. Derrida.”
“You know what they say, sir — the only thing that men and women can agree on is that neither sex trusts women.”
“In that case, I cannot understand your, how do they say these days, your ‘sexual orientation.’ ”
Emanuelle Derrida laughed. “I make love with them,” she said. “I didn’t say I trusted them…. Do you have a plan, sir?”
“ ‘We,’ Mlle. Derrida. Do ‘we’ have a plan is the question. And the answer is, yes, we do.”
She wasn’t sure if she liked hearing that. M. Pilier had met his untimely end the last time Skorzeny had had a plan. From what she’d heard of that event, she was quite sure she didn’t want to come up against either the man or the woman when someone’s life was on the line — in this case, hers.
“My arrangement with Col. Zarin was simple — Miss Harrington was to deliver the lady in Tehran. What happened to the lady after that was none of our concern. In exchange, we were to be given access to the Iranian nuclear program’s first live-fire test.”
“What?” asked Mlle. Derrida. This was the first she had heard of that.
“You do understand that what we have been doing with the laser projections, through our contacts in CERN in Switzerland, was simply prologue. The Iranian government needs a bit of theater, a pretext, in order to proclaim the Coming of their Mahdi, and that is what we have provided them. Conflict on a global scale, all for the nugatory price of a little technology and a piggyback ride on the comatose clods at NASA. If America wishes to abdicate its role in space, there is certainly no reason for others not to take advantage of it.”
He drummed his fingers lightly on top of Maryam’s computer. “Consider this. I know he gave it to her. I know it represents the very latest in NSA communications and analytic software. I know it is a poisoned gift, and he knows that I know it. He knows that the word for “poison” in German is Gift. He suspects, but cannot be sure, that I won’t care, that I will somehow find a way to use his own weapon against him — that I am, in short, smarter than he. Which is, in fact, true.”
“If you’re so smart, sir,” observed Mlle. Derrida, “then why is Maryam presumably free and Miss Harrington fled?”
He glared at her with those basilisk eyes. “That is not a question I wish to entertain at the moment, Mlle. Derrida,” he said. “Now, if I may continue with my ruminations… what if I activate this computer?”
“It might blow us out of the sky,” she said.
“Correct. But the Iranians don’t know that. Should I come to Iran, filled with apologies over Miss Harrington’s unconscionable treachery, and bring with me this splendid piece of NSA intellectual architecture, do you not think they would be appreciative?”
“Will you warn them, or just let them blow themselves up?”
“Appropriate, if somewhat vague, caveats will be given, of course.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir. So what is the plan? If I am to be there with you, I feel I have the right to—”
“You have the right not to ask questions, and to absorb any information I choose to give you. But since I require your assistance beyond your usual capacity, this is what we are going to do.” He explained in as little detail as he could. Then he said:
“From there we journey to the Holy City of Qom, where we will witness a very great miracle — provided by me of course. But that miracle will come only after we herald it with another miracle, this one in New York. They are related, you see, all the signs and portents. The Last Trump shall sound, and the world will be the better for it, if less populated when all is said and done. And I shall be infinitely richer and, may I say, happier. My life’s work will be fulfilled, and although I have absolutely no intention of dying anytime soon, I shall be able to die happy when the appointed hour and place comes.”
“Your own appointment in Samarra.”
“I will have her back. Do you understand me? I will have her back. Her place is with me. She knows that. I know that.”
Mlle. Derrida decided to ignore that. “Where will we go? After… whatever it is that is going to happen.”
“It is enough for me to know. Now, leave me, for I need to ponder all these things in my heart, as the Bible says.”
“The Bible was talking about Mary, sir.”
“Precisely,” said Skorzeny, signaling for some music and closing his eyes.
She knew just the thing. After all, they were going to the ancient land of Zoroaster.
A minute later, the plane filled with the sounds of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra.
CHAPTER FORTY
New York City
Jake Sinclair sat in his office near Times Square and admired Principessa Stanley. The woman was looking more attractive all the time, damn it. He loved the way she moved, the way she used her hands, her wide mouth, her amazing figure; except for her hair, which presumably was still growing back in, she was a work of art. Not that she would stay that way forever; no woman ever did. Women were like fruit or flowers. You had to know just when to pluck them.
That was about as original a thought as Jake Sinclair could muster at this moment as he watched the delicious Ms. Stanley deliver her report. Surreptitiously, he glanced at the clock. He was meeting Angela Hassett in her private suite at the Waldorf in less than half an hour, but it wouldn’t take him that long to get across town, and beside Principessa hadn’t yet—
Hold on. What had she said to him back in L.A., the first time they met? That if he ever kept her waiting again she’d kill him? And she probably would, too.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Stanley,” he said, rising. “But I have a most urgent appointment across town that I simply can’t be late for.”
She stopped in midsentence, switched gears. “I get it. Life or death, huh?”
She didn’t know the half of it. “I wonder if we might continue this conversation later today…” Might as well go for it. “S
ay, over dinner?”
She gave him a look. No, she gave him that look. Then she made him wait. The bitch…
“That would be… wonderful, Mr. Sinclair.”
“Jake. Shall we say seven-thirty at Los Pescadores?”
Her face fell as she consulted her smartphone. “I’m afraid I can’t do seven-thirty… Would eight-fifteen be okay? There’s a couple of things I have to move around.”
“Pick you up?”
“Meet you there.”
He got up and put on his jacket. “What were you saying about this mysterious Mr. Grant?” he inquired. He hadn’t really been listening at all. But she knew that.
“Tell you tonight,” she said.
Jake Sinclair was feeling pretty good about his chances when he got to the Waldorf. He was five minutes early, thank God.
He took the private elevator up to the tower where Lucky Luciano once had lived. Those were the days in old New York, he thought to himself, when real men walked the streets of Manhattan, a gun on one hip and a flask on the other. Today, the city felt like a Puritan concentration camp, with sin banished and only the wide-bodied tourists to tell you that this had once been a city of giants instead of financiers. The sooner he was back in L.A., the better.
Unless, of course, he got a better offer from Ms. Stanley. Then he was sure he could find a reason to spend more time in the city and leave Jenny II to the tender mercies of her tennis instructor and the pool boy. The only thing wrong with Ms. Stanley was that her first name wasn’t Jenny, but he figured that body was worth having to learn a new name. He was at the door of her suite — the suite of the next President of the United States. JFK would have been so proud.
Angela opened the door on the first ring. My, she did look rather good. “We have a problem,” she said.
He stepped inside. No kiss, no hug, nothing. Fine. His date with Ms. Stanley was starting to look even better. “What’s the beef?”
“Something’s up. I can’t tell you what it is because I don’t know and anyway that’s your job, finding out what’s up. That’s why you employ all those horrible reporters who are always bugging me about something or other when I’m just trying to get my message out. Why do you let them do that?”
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