“Of course,” he replied. “Precisely because Matlow was dying, because he was a coward. At such moments, the ability to lie flees from men of that kind.”
She folded her arms. “What about the images your contractor sent us?”
Bazin’s craggy face turned to granite. “Staged, I imagine,” he growled. “I am very disappointed in her. I would like to think that Dimitri made my displeasure over those lies plain to her.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
He eyed her. “No,” said Bazin at length. “Yolkin would not hesitate to break protocol and contact me if he had ended Bauer or the assassin. He would want to show off.”
“The fact that he has not—” she began.
“The fact that he has not means Bauer killed him,” Bazin snapped irritably. “Mager and the others too, I imagine. All the more reason for us to succeed here.”
Ziminova fell silent, unable to frame her thoughts in a way that would not annoy her commander more if she voiced them.
He saw it in her eyes, though. “Galina, your silence is insulting.”
She sighed. “Does it not concern you that we have heard nothing from the consulate in New York or headquarters in Moscow? It has been several hours since President Suvarov touched down at Sheremetyevo. If Bauer’s capture is of such importance to him, why has there been only silence?”
Bazin looked away. “Suvarov has more to deal with than just the balance of this account.”
“My point exactly,” said Ziminova. “He may not even be in office anymore. In which case, our orders will be in question.”
He eyed her. “You think I am exceeding my remit? Bauer killed Russian citizens. That’s reason enough.”
“We are now well beyond the mission parameters given to us at the start of the operation, sir.”
“I expect better from you.” Bazin sniffed. “I did not recruit you to my command because you question orders, but because you obey them.”
“I serve the Motherland,” she replied after a moment, “not one man’s need for belligerence.”
Bazin was about to chastise her, but before he could draw breath there was a chime from his jacket pocket. He pulled a cellular telephone from the depths of his coat and spoke into it. “Report.”
Ziminova heard the faint mutter of Ekel’s voice on the other end of the line. “I have located the watchers.”
* * *
“Deal with them,” said Bazin, and he cut the call short.
Ekel nodded as if the commander were there with him, and continued walking up the shady sidewalk toward the parked Suburban. He made a point of looking carefully at the vehicle, even though he had already observed it from the front entrance of the hospital for several minutes. The American security agents had chosen a good viewpoint for themselves, but at the cost of making their presence highly visible to anyone with even the most basic understanding of surveillance techniques. Perhaps that had been part of their mission brief, to make sure they stood out in order to deter anyone who might come looking for their principals. If so, then the Americans had seriously misunderstood the adversaries they were facing.
But then again, Ekel thought, they so often did. He guessed that these men felt secure and in control here, on the streets of a city that belonged to them. That overconfidence would work to the Russians’ advantage.
He approached the passenger side door and came up close, tapping on the opaque black glass of the window. After a moment, it dropped open a few inches, revealing the face of a Latino man wearing dark sunglasses. “Yeah?” he asked.
Ekel produced a gold detective’s shield with one hand and held it in his palm. He had exchanged a fake NYPD badge for a fake LAPD one on the way in from the airstrip. “You can’t be parked here.” He nodded toward a sign on a nearby light pole that said the same, warning drivers not to block a road used frequently by emergency vehicles.
“It’s not a problem.”
“What?” Ekel gestured at the window, motioning for the man to open it a little more. “You got to move this thing.” He mimicked an accent he heard on American cop shows.
The opening widened, revealing a shield of a different design dangling from a chain around the other man’s neck. “Federal agents,” he explained. “That doesn’t apply to us.”
Ekel took in another man in the driver’s seat and a third behind him. The Russian’s free hand dropped out of sight, snaking into the folds of his jacket.
“Show me your badge again,” said the Latino man, his tone flat and hard.
“Okay, sure.” Ekel nodded, offering it up for scrutiny. As the agent leaned forward to get a better look, Ekel’s other hand came back gripping a Makarov P6 pistol. The modified gun had an integral silencer capable of reducing the sound of a shot to a loud cough, and Ekel fired it into the agent’s face at close range. He kept on shooting, putting bullets into the driver and the other CTU operative until the magazine was empty, unloading the weapon in less than three seconds. He didn’t worry about through-and-through shots penetrating the walls or the windows of the SUV. The vehicle’s armor worked both ways.
When it was done, Ekel hid the P6 away and leaned briefly into the SUV to tap the automatic window control, slipping back out as the glass rose up and concealed his kills.
He walked casually back toward the hospital, watching an ambulance blaze past in a skirl of sirens and flashing lights. “It’s done,” he said into his cell phone. “What next?”
“The daughter has arrived,” Bazin replied. “Make sure the package is in place.”
Ekel nodded and made for the underground car park. “Confirmed. And the primary?”
He heard the smile in Bazin’s voice. “Patience.”
22
The elevator doors slid back and the first face Kim saw was her husband’s. He looked no different from the first time she had seen him, a chance meeting at the hospital before a lunch date with her friend Sue. In the months that followed, Kim had learned that Sue—a college roommate who was now a senior nurse as Cedars-Sinai—had intended the two of them to cross paths all along.
That memory seemed like something from another life, as if it belonged to another Kim. She had been single for a long time, drifting though a handful of relationships after she and Chase Edmunds had suffered their fractious breakup, but never finding someone she could really connect with. Sue later admitted that on meeting Dr. Stephen Wesley, she had known immediately that this was the person that Kim Bauer needed in her life. She’d been right.
Stephen was kind and he was patient, and most of all he was always there for her. Right now, Kim needed that more than ever.
“Hey, pumpkin,” she told her daughter, shifting the little girl’s weight where she lay draped over her mother’s shoulder. “Here’s Daddy…”
“Okay.” Teri blinked and yawned.
Stephen smiled ruefully as Kim approached. “She’s still sleepy?”
Kim nodded. “The flight back from New York wiped her out, I think.”
“I know the feeling,” said her husband, and he stifled a yawn of his own.
The trip home hadn’t been a smooth one. The sudden, unexplained addition of extra security measures at JFK delayed everything, and that alone would have been stressful enough, but being forced to fly home without her father had made Kim irritable and worried. A day ago, she hugged him when he promised that he would be coming back to California with them, to finally stick to his retirement from government service and find some low-key private security job. But that had not happened. Events overtook Jack Bauer, as they seemed fated to do, and now Kim was in the same place she had been time and time again over the past few years. She couldn’t be certain if her father was alive or dead, and she hated that this hollow feeling in her chest was so familiar, so well-known to her.
Stephen came close, and without words, he drew his wife and daughter into an embrace. Kim saw the understanding in his eyes, and she blinked away tears before they could form.
“Th
anks for coming to see me,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“I don’t know.”
She put Teri down and all of a sudden the little girl came alive with a spurt of new energy, dashing ahead to lead the way down the corridor toward Stephen’s office. Other nurses and staff smiled and waved at the child. She was well-liked by her husband’s work colleagues, and a regular visitor. Kim tried to make sure mother, father and daughter spent a lunchtime together at least once a week.
When Teri was out of earshot, Kim leaned close to her husband. “No one is saying anything. All the news coming out of New York is frightening, this assassination, the president’s resignation … And nobody knows where my dad is.”
He frowned. “You used to work with these people once, right? The Counter Terrorist Unit? Isn’t there anyone you could call?”
She shook her head. “I already tried. But Chloe isn’t answering her phone, and the numbers I had for CTU Los Angeles are coming up dead.” Kim swallowed hard, fighting down a sob. “Oh god, Stephen, it’s happening just like last time. I think … I think I’m going to lose him.” She looked away. “I can’t go through all that again.”
Stephen squeezed her hand. “You don’t know that he got caught up in all that trouble.”
“I do!” She halted. Teri was fixated on a conversation with Sue, but still she turned so the little girl wouldn’t see the anguish on her mother’s face. “I know my dad,” Kim went on. “I know he could never stand by and let bad things happen to good people, it’s who he is!” She wiped at her eyes. “And … and I told him it was okay. I told him he could stay at CTU and come back with us later…” The next words made her blood run cold. “What if something terrible happened to him because he stayed in New York?”
He pulled her close again. “Kim, no. That’s not on you. Don’t blame yourself.”
“I told him to be careful,” she said in a small voice.
Stephen nodded. “Come on, honey. Come into my office. We’ll see if we can’t find somebody with some answers.”
Kim nodded and walked with him to the door. Teri dashed ahead to get there first and rushed in, running through the anteroom outside the office proper, dragging her plush toy bear along with her.
She heard her daughter call out in surprise as Stephen closed the door behind her.
“Jack!” piped Teri. “I mean, Grandpa!”
Kim pushed past her husband and into the inner room. There, crouched on his haunches so he could look his grandchild in the eyes, was her father. A smile, behind it a mix of joy and fatigue, relief and fear, split his face. “Hey, sweetheart. How’s Bear?”
Teri held up the toy. “He’s good. He was sad that you weren’t coming with us but now he’s happy.”
“Me too.” He stood up. “Hello, Kim. Stephen. Sorry to surprise you like this.”
“Dad.” Kim went to her father and hugged him. She felt him tense, and immediately she knew he had been hurt. He smelled of sweat, cordite and smoke, as if he had come from a battleground. “You’re here.”
“Yeah.”
Stephen came forward, casting a practiced eye over his father-in-law. “Jack … you look like you could use some help.” He nodded toward an examination alcove across the room. “Take what you need.”
A silent communication passed between the two men, and Kim’s father nodded. “Thank you.” He smiled down at Teri. “Sweetheart, Grandpa and Mommy need to talk about something. Why don’t you and Daddy go play with Bear, huh?”
“Okay…” Teri’s tone was a little sullen, but the girl didn’t question him. Jack had that way with her, Kim noted. She trusted him implicitly.
Stephen shot Kim a questioning look, and she responded with a nod. “We’ll be right outside,” he said, taking his daughter by the hand to lead her back out into the corridor.
As the door closed, Kim’s father slumped against the examination bed. “Hey. I know this isn’t what you had in mind when you asked me to come.”
“You’re in trouble.” It wasn’t a question.
A rueful smile crossed his face. “It’s complicated.” He shrugged out of his jacket. “Can you help me get this shirt off?”
Kim nodded, and winced as bruising and blood-caked wounds were revealed beneath. Her hand went to her mouth. “Dad … Good grief, what happened to you?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“You’re the worst liar.” Kim forced aside her worries and set to work helping him redress his injuries with fresh bandages, finding clean clothes in Stephen’s work closet.
When he finally met her gaze, there was so much sorrow in it, Kim’s breath caught in her throat. The last time she had seen that look in her father’s eyes, it had been on the day he had come to tell her that her mother was dead. What have they taken from you this time?
“I’m sorry,” he told her.
“For what?”
“I’m not going to be able to keep the promise I made.”
* * *
“Is Grandpa going to stay with us?”
Stephen couldn’t keep a frown from his face as he took his daughter out to the waiting area beyond the doctors’ offices. “I don’t know, pumpkin. That’s up to him. He’s got a very important job.”
Teri nodded with the kind of seriousness that only a child of her age could muster. “I remember. You said he has some work to do.” She studied the face of her toy bear, as if it would provide some input as well.
“That’s right.” He glanced up and his eyes fell on a television screen mounted on the wall. The sound was muted on the feed from CNB, still showing the same endless round of footage of ambulances racing down New York streets from the day before, mixed in with shots of police helicopters hovering in the gaps between skyscrapers and news anchors with grave expressions.
Stephen sighed. Kim had never spoken in great detail about her father’s job, but he knew enough to guess at the shape of it. He knew that Jack Bauer had been a high-level federal agent and part of the Counter Terrorist Unit, and from his wife’s reticence on certain things, he was certain that the man had been involved in working against threats to the USA for several years. Kim’s pain at the loss of her mother, the woman they had named their daughter after, was all caught up in that, but Stephen had never pressured Kim to tell him more than she wanted to. He loved her dearly, but he had learned there were things in the Bauer family history that they wanted to stay buried … and that was fine. When the day came that Kim wanted to tell him, he would be there, and it wouldn’t change a thing about how he felt about his family.
“Dr. Wesley?” He turned as a nurse he didn’t recognize came toward him. She had blond hair tied back in a tight, severe bun, accenting an attractive if austere face. “Pardon me. I know you’re on break…”
“Is there a problem?” He noticed that she wasn’t wearing an ID tag.
The nurse held up a medical chart. “Dr. Lund has an issue that requires a second opinion … It will just be a minute.”
He took the chart and scanned it. “All right…” Stephen beckoned Sue over. “Hey. Can you watch Teri for me? I’ve got to deal with something.” He bent down and kissed his daughter on the top of the head. “Be right back.”
“Okay.” Teri didn’t look up, still engrossed in her staring contest with the stuffed toy.
Sue smiled. “Sure, Doctor.” Her smile faded as she glanced at the nurse. “I’m sorry, you are…?”
“I’m new here,” came the reply. “Nice to meet you.”
The nurse walked on toward the elevator and Stephen fell in behind her, still poring over the chart. The patient was one of Lund’s problem cases, but Stephen was sure that he’d heard the other doctor saying the person in question was showing improvement. As he read on, he could find nothing that would require the insight of another oncologist.
He looked up as the elevator doors shut. “You’re sure this is the right chart?”
The nurse ignored him and punched a button. Instead of descending to the f
loor below where Lund did his rounds, it began to rise to the upper wards.
“Hey,” he began, reaching out to tap her on the shoulder.
She moved like a striking cobra. The woman spun in place, grabbing his outstretched arm and twisting it hard enough to force him down toward the deck of the elevator car. Her other hand pulled a serrated push-dagger from a lanyard hidden in the collar of her scrubs and pressed the tip into his throat. “Do not call for help. Do not speak.” The nurse’s accent had abruptly shifted to a Middle-European inflection that he didn’t recognize. “Do not try to escape. Nod if you understand.”
He did so, slowly and careful to avoid the tip of the dagger pressing into his flesh.
The elevator came to a halt and the doors opened to reveal two men in nondescript clothes. One of them, a large man with a tanned complexion, gestured for him to get back up on his feet. The nurse—although he doubted now that was what she was—drew back and allowed it to happen, pushing him out into the corridor.
This floor of Cedars-Sinai was empty at the moment, cleared for refurbishment work that was due to start in a day or so. Stephen looked around, and realized he was very alone. “What do you want?”
The big man smiled without warmth. “You are an intelligent man, Dr. Wesley. Why not take a guess?”
* * *
Kim blinked back tears, but she didn’t look away from him. “Dad. No, please, don’t do this.” She shook her head.
With each word, it felt like Jack’s heart was being torn out of him. “I came here because I had to see you, Kim. I owed you that. I couldn’t just drop off the face of the world and let you go on wondering, never knowing…” He remembered the aftermath of the thwarted reactor meltdown attacks a few years earlier and the circumstances that had forced him to stage his own demise. That act still haunted him for how much it had hurt his daughter. “I hated myself for doing that once before. I never want to put you through that again.”
24: Deadline (24 Series) Page 29
