The Columbus Code

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The Columbus Code Page 26

by mike Evans


  Winters scowled at his notes. Nothing Maria remembered gave him so much as a clue. Still, he went over the list again, looking at each item from as many perspectives as possible, asking new questions—trying to read between the lines.

  Everything in him wanted to call Donleavy to see if he’d heard any buzz, but he didn’t want to run the risk of Rebhorn finding out his friend had helped Maria. He had no choice but to call Rebhorn and hope to convince him with what he had. Mention of a threat like the one he thought they faced—detonation of a nuclear bomb at a location inside the continental United States—was too catastrophic to ignore, even if Rebhorn thought he was crazy. He might scream and shout in response. He might tell Winters he was fired. But after the phone call, Rebhorn would calm down . . . and then he would get curious. And then he would call the right people to look into it. Hopefully before Tejada and Molina discovered where he and Maria and Sophia were hiding.

  And Winters had no doubt that they could.

  Few people had Rebhorn’s personal cell phone number. Winters was one of those few. Rebhorn answered on the first ring. But his greeting set Winters back in the chair.

  “Winters,” he roared. “Where the—where have you been?”

  How had he—oh. The Barcelona code. “Long story,” Winters said, as casually as possible. “I’ll give you the short version.”

  “Don’t give me any version. Just get your—”

  “We’re talking bomb, sir,” Winters said, interrupting, then he plunged into an account of all he knew about the threat they faced.

  “I have two things to say to you, Agent Winters,” Rebhorn said when Winters finally paused. “One, you are obviously more unstable than Archer says you are. And, two—”

  “Sir, I know it sounds crazy, but I’m as certain of this as I’ve ever been of anything.”

  “If what you said was true—and I’ve always doubted those suitcase bomb stories—but if it were true, you’d be talking about a forty-five-year-old bomb. Do you understand that, Winters? A forty-five-year-old leaking, deteriorating device.”

  “I know it sounds like a long shot.”

  “It sounds like the ravings of a madman.”

  “Yes, sir,” Winters said. “But I think—”

  “The second thing I have to say to you,” Rebhorn continued, “is—get yourself back here within the next forty-eight hours or you are fired. Permanently.”

  “See, that’s the thing,” Winters said. “I’m stuck in—”

  A tone sounded indicating the call had ended, followed by nothing but dead air. Rebhorn had hung up.

  Maria could only sleep in short, fitful increments and she was just drifting into an uneasy doze when a vibration near her head alerted her to a call on her cell phone. She reached for it on the pillow and sat upright on the bed. The call was from Donleavy.

  “Maria—Taylor here,” he said when she answered.

  The rest was chopped up. Maria pressed the phone to her ear—as if that were going to help the connection. “You’re breaking up,” she said.

  “—heard another—Tej—Lou—”

  “You heard Tejada and Molina talking?” she asked, trying to make sense of the garbled conversation.

  “Not Mol—you left it set up—couldn’t find you—got in—”

  “What did they say, Taylor?” She leapt from the bed and moved to the opposite end of the room, hoping for a better cell phone signal.

  “—Wall Street—”

  “What about Wall Street?” she pleaded.

  “—timate solution—”

  “What?”

  The phone beeped and went dead.

  “No!” Maria poked at it but the signal was gone. “No! Donleavy, come back!”

  She didn’t realize how loudly she was yelling until her father appeared in the doorway with a meat cleaver in his hand.

  “Dad?” she said. “What’s a ‘timate’ solution?”

  Tejada was almost to Barcelona and he still hadn’t carried out Abaddon’s order. He picked up his phone three times en route only to toss it back onto the car seat. It was inevitable, of course. There was no doubt he would do it. He believed in the plan and had always seen himself in control of a global government. It was what he was born to do. The focus of his entire life. All he had to do was place one phone call and it would be his. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to give the order.

  Back then, it had not mattered that masses of people might die to accomplish his goal. Before, when he had not known how loss could feel, it didn’t matter the consequences. Didn’t matter that thousands of people might die. They were nothing to him. But that was before . . . before Maria had entered his life and turned his world upside down.

  Near the city limits Tejada pulled over and walked to a wall that bordered the beach. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, promising a soft Mediterranean night. The beauty of it burned in his chest as he cupped the phone in his hand. Anyone within blocks of the Wall Street financial district would be disintegrated. If he made the call, he would have to live with the deaths of all those people. And the rest of it too.

  “But that is the way it must be,” he said softly. “It is the path I chose long ago. And a destiny I cannot avoid.”

  With a flick of his thumb against the keypad, he placed the call.

  Is there anyone you don’t know?” Winters asked Sophia.

  “I try to be accommodating.”

  Maria slipped out of the kitchen, leaving her father and Sophia staring lovingly into each other’s eyes. Maybe if they hadn’t been in this situation, she would have told her father to kiss the woman already.

  The plan Sophia proposed was for a friend to meet them at an all-but-abandoned airport about fifty miles away and see that Maria and her father were flown safely to New York. How she knew someone who could do that, Maria didn’t know. But it was a gift she was glad to receive. A way out without having to face Tejada . . . or Molina. And in the meantime, Winters had reached Donleavy with a better connection. According to him, Tejada and Molina did in fact possess a suitcase bomb and they intended to detonate it somewhere on Wall Street. That was the “ultimate solution,” according to Donleavy. Someone had to get there and stop him. Maybe Rebhorn would send an agent. But if not, Winters was determined to act on what he knew, if they could find a way to get to New York. That’s when Sophia offered to contact a friend. And that’s when the plan for them to leave came together.

  Maria’s job had been to procure a safe house for their arrival. One phone call to Nathan Todd at the church in Maryland had accomplished that. She toyed with the phone again now. She needed to call Austin. To hear his voice and the comfort it brought. Because she was scared to death.

  Austin’s cell phone went straight to voice mail. “Sorry I’ve been incommunicado,” she said. “I need your help. Call me?”

  Maria glanced at the phone once more. She hesitated to call Austin at the office. She’d been out of touch with Snowden, and for all she knew he was in on this too. But she had to hear Austin’s voice so she dialed the number from memory.

  “Gump, Snowden and Meir. How may I help you?”

  Betsy Smythe. Maria silently cursed the fact that the firm was one of the few that still used an actual receptionist.

  “Austin Faulkner, please,” she said, in what even she knew was a lame attempt at a Southern accent. It would be a miracle if Betsy took her for some relative of Austin’s. The uncomfortable pause was a sure indication that it hadn’t worked. Until Betsy said, “Mr. Faulkner is no longer employed here.”

  “Since when?” Maria asked.

  “I am not at liberty to divulge that information.” Betsy’s voice slid out of protocol mode. “Is this—”

  Maria ended the call.

  She tried to resist the fear that pressed so closely, but with all that had happened lately, what was left but the worst possible scenario? They’d found out he was helping her get Elena away from Molina, she concluded. That was all there was to it.

>   Maria could hardly breathe.

  Stop, she told herself. She had to stop, or she wasn’t going to make it through what she’d already made up her mind to do. In fact, now was the time to inform her father. Now or never.

  Winters and Sophia were sitting in the nook, saying nothing. Just staring at each other the way they had all morning. A plate of churros waited, uneaten, between them. Her father looked up first, his eyes filled with tears.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Maria said.

  “No, please—join us.” Sophia pushed the plate toward the empty place at the table but Maria didn’t sit down.

  “I got the safe house,” Maria said. “We can go there whenever we need to.”

  Just as she’d known it would, her father’s face darkened. “You’ll be going there straight from the airport.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the thing. I’m staying with you.”

  “No, you’re not,” he responded forcefully. His finger jabbed the air in her direction, punctuating every word. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I know.”

  He waited, eyebrows arched, while Sophia excused herself from the room.

  “That’s it?” Winters asked with a wry tone.

  “I’m not going to try to talk you into it, Dad, because I don’t need your permission. This is my battle too. I started it and I’m finishing it.”

  “You’re going to disarm a bomb.”

  “No. And neither are you.”

  “I know who to talk to—”

  “I can help—”

  “You can help get yourself killed!”

  “Dad—stop. For once, just listen. Not to what I think. Not to what makes sense. Just to what I feel.”

  Winters looked away and Maria slipped onto the chair Sophia had vacated. “I can do something,” she said. “I don’t know what, but I can contribute. What I can’t do is just stand by and watch another 9/11 happen to us.”

  Winters swallowed hard. “You are your mother’s daughter,” he said softly.

  “No,” Maria said, taking his hand. “I am my father’s.”

  Carlos Molina didn’t speak a word until the Catalonia jet touched down in New York City. Louis had slept the entire flight. Tejada sat behind them, papers spread around as he pretended to work. But as the wheels screeched on the tarmac, Molina turned to Tejada and said, “It was not in the plan for you to come. The Master did not order it.”

  “And yet here I am.” Tejada kept his eyes on the documents as he tucked them into his briefcase.

  “I am still to take down Winters?” Molina asked.

  Tejada could feel Molina’s gaze boring in on him. He smiled, without looking up, and said simply, “Your task remains the same. Winters has the journal. You watched the Conte woman give it to him when he left Málaga, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “So retrieve it and take it to Abaddon. Do what you will with Winters.”

  Molina gestured toward Louis, who was blinking at the early sunlight. “And him?”

  “He will assist you. There are two named Winters, are there not?”

  “I thought you—”

  “I have had a change of heart.”

  Molina’s eyes narrowed. “Then may I ask why you are here?”

  Tejada looked him full in the face. “Let us just say I have trust issues.”

  Molina seemed caught off guard by the comment, but Tejada pushed on. “Do I have reason to believe you have carried out my orders regarding Wall Street? Including the change?”

  “Yes,” Molina said.

  “The trail of evidence will lead back to Iran?”

  “Perhaps not. I had it in place for the carrier to be an Iranian student. Now that you’ve ordered a—”

  “Aside from that, the trail will hold? With the CIA’s cooperation?”

  Molina’s eyes narrowed with resentment. “When the Americans conduct an investigation, yes, they will find their information points them to the Iranians. The story was originally concocted to protect the CIA from its own operations.” Molina clenched his teeth. “It would be airtight if you had not changed the carrier.”

  “I had my reasons, which are no longer your concern.” Tejada nodded in Molina’s direction. “You will send the text on my command. In my presence.”

  “Yes,” Molina said and he took a cell phone from his pocket.

  Winters didn’t open the note from Sophia until the cargo plane made its final approach into LaGuardia. He knew what it said and was certain if he read it sooner he would order the pilot to take him back to Spain. Maybe he was as crazy as Rebhorn said he was.

  John,

  I know I must accept that our time together may have come to an end. Separating is far harder to do than anything else we have been through, and that is saying a great deal, isn’t it? Now my prayer vigil begins and it will not end until you have safely done what you must do. But please know, Agent Winters, that if you return to Spain, I will not be so gracious about letting you leave again.

  Te amo,

  Sophia

  “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

  Winters looked over at Maria, seated in the sling next to him.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I think Mom would like her.”

  Winters nodded. “How’s your Spanish?”

  “Probably better than yours.”

  “Do you know what ‘te amo’ means?”

  A slow smile—the first he’d seen—spread across her face. “Looks like the feeling is mutual. It means ‘I love you.’”

  Moments later, the plane bounced onto the runway in New York. It was time to do this thing. And now Winters had twice the reason to stay alive.

  According to the man Maria referred to as “Sophia’s guy,” they were to meet their escort just inside the cargo terminal. He’d be in a brown work uniform with an orange Transporte Internacional logo above the shirt pocket. It would be identical to the ones Winters and Maria changed into during their flight. They had matching caps too, and Maria’s hair stuck out beneath hers in every direction. It wasn’t much of a disguise. Anyone who knew her would recognize her from the hair alone, but to Winters’ relief they crossed the tarmac and stepped inside the terminal without incident. Their Transporte clone was waiting as promised, and led them through the hangar toward a door on the far side.

  This guy could have a real future in the Secret Service. Serious lack of facial expression. Monosyllabic answers. Even the shades he donned as he opened the door were standard issue.

  “Louis?”

  Winters went immediately on alert. Maria stopped short in front of him and he stepped on her heel.

  And then it all went down in triple time. Maria’s elongated scream. Her body slung over Louis’ shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Her body landing on the backseat of a car. Tires burning rubber as they sped away.

  All the while, Winters lunged for Louis but he dove into the car after Maria with an agility that belied his heft. The door flapped as the car fishtailed across the pavement with Winters in pursuit on foot. As they pulled away, Maria appeared in the back window, waving him off and mouthing the words “Go to Wall Street.”

  This was exactly the scenario that had terrified Winters. Fighting against a sense of panic, he turned to their escort, who stood helplessly at the hangar door, cell phone in hand.

  “You want me to call nine-one-one?” he asked.

  “Where’s your car?” Winters barked.

  The guy broke into a run toward a silver SUV parked a few yards away. Winters followed. The cell phone he was digging out of his pocket rang and he jammed it to his ear.

  “Winters,” he said in a huff.

  It was Donleavy.

  “I’ve been listening to the chatter in New York,” he said. “Just in case.”

  “And?”

  “The pilot of an airborne RadNet radiation detector flying over Manhattan has picked up a spike in gamma rays.”

  Winters climbed into the SUV and motioned for the driver
to follow the car that was now turning onto the main road on the other side of the security fence.

  “They’ve narrowed the radiation source to a four-block sector of Lower Manhattan,” Donleavy continued. “But nobody knows what they’re looking for.”

  “A suitcase,” Winters said. “Call them. Tell them to look for someone carrying a suitcase.”

  “I tell them I heard it from you and they’ll put me in the psych ward. I thought you were headed down there.”

  “I can’t! Those thugs just took Maria.” Winters grabbed the dashboard with one hand as the driver careened the SUV out the gate. “They went left!” he shouted to the driver.

  “John, listen to me.” Donleavy’s voice was calm and even. “They’re not going to kill her. I heard the conversation myself. Tejada told Molina to make sure nothing happened to her.”

  “This wasn’t Molina. It was some guy. Louis, I think.” Winters gestured to the driver again. “Take a right—cut across that lot!”

  “Even better,” Donleavy said. “According to Maria he’s further down the food chain. He’ll do whatever Tejada said—”

  “I can’t just let them take her—”

  “And you can’t just let them blow up Manhattan. Get to Wall Street. No one will believe me if I tell them. I’ll find Maria. Did you get a license number?”

  “A license number?” Winters cried indignantly. “I didn’t have time to—”

  The driver rattled off a series of numbers and letters. Winters asked Donleavy, “Did you get that?”

  “I’m on it,” Donleavy said. “Keep your phone on.”

  Winters shoved the phone into his pocket and scanned the road ahead of them.

  “What do you want me to do?” the driver asked.

  Winters watched the traffic swallow the car and gave a heavy sigh. “Take me to Wall Street,” he said with resignation. “And get there as fast as you can.”

  When the SUV turned onto Bleecker Street, confusion was already taking hold. Police were setting up roadblocks that pedestrians sullenly disregarded, while red-faced drivers leaned on their horns, stuck their heads out of windows, and shouted obscenities.

 

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