Once in the elevator, she pushed the button and the elevator began to move. But not in the direction I expected.
“If we’re leaving the hospital, why are we going up?”
“First we need to stop off and see an old friend of yours.”
Chapter 35
She couldn’t possibly be taking me to see Nora, could she? I knew from my brief history with Jovana that anything was possible, but even for her that would be a suicide mission.
We got off on the fifth floor. Since Nora was supposedly on the top floor, which this wasn’t, it answered my question. But if not Nora, then who?
Jovana wheeled me along the hallway, until we came to a room guarded by another burly cop. She explained that she’d brought her patient, JP Warner, to visit a friend. And when he checked his list of potential visitors, sure enough, I was on it. At this point, I thought the only fitting conclusion to this would be if Jovana was actually a nurse.
She pushed me through the door, where I was staring straight at a woman in a hospital bed. She didn’t look like her usual pretentious self, hooked to a series of machines, but she still glowed.
I never thought I’d be so excited to see Lauren Bowden … alive.
I looked to Jovana in stunned silence.
“Feel free to talk in here, Warner … the room’s been debugged.”
“What about the guard?”
“Don’t worry about him—he’s one of ours.”
“Ours?”
“I don’t have time for your questions—I have work to do, and then we need to get out of here. Got it?”
“She got hit pointblank in the chest—how did she survive?” I asked anyway.
“Thanks to the bulletproof vest she was wearing. It still hit her good enough to crack her sternum, and collapse a lung. She had surgery last night, but should make a full recovery.”
The vest explained the appearance of weight gain in her midsection, but like everything else in this case, led to more questions. “What was she doing wearing a vest?”
“You’ll have to ask her when she wakes up, but usually people wear them because they’re concerned about getting shot. And since she’d been threatened at gunpoint on television, just days earlier, it seems like the prudent thing to do. But my concern is to find out if the bullets lodged in the vest match the type of weapon that was used in the Fernandez murder.”
“So you’re the one who stole the gun from the FBI. They think it’s me.”
She laughed. “Like you could possibly pull that off.”
“Who are you working for? If you don’t tell me, I’m going to find Hawkins, and then you can explain all of this to him.”
“All you need to know is that I’m on your team. But if you’re uncomfortable with me getting you out of here, I’ll wheel you right back to your room and you can sleep up for your CT Scan tomorrow. Just a friendly warning—sleep with one eye open, because these people you’re dealing with are big on cleaning up their messes.”
“I get the point—what now?”
“I need to get that vest Lauren was wearing.”
“Wouldn’t they have cut it off her before surgery?”
“They did, and your buddy Hawkins took it into evidence. But luckily, I was able to get the real one off her prior to that, and replace it with a lookalike, before they were able to screw with my evidence.”
She walked to the window and opened it outward. Then seemingly out of nowhere, Spiderman appeared. I’d become so used to the bizarre that this didn’t even faze me.
It was actually one of the window washers, who dress up as superheroes to entertain the kids in the children’s ward one floor above us. Spidey handed the vest through the window to Jovana, and scaled back up the wall. Seems he was holding onto it for safekeeping. She handed the vest directly to me, with instructions to put it on.
I had a lot of experience with vests from my years spent in war zones, so I was able to hook it on quickly, pleasing Jovana. I placed my suit coat on over it, which was a little tight. Jovana took my bathrobe and tossed it into the hamper.
I took one last look at Lauren as we left the room. Man, was she going to be tough to live with as a heroic shooting survivor, on the heels of the on-air hostage situation. But I smiled—it sure beat the alternative.
We returned to the elevator, and this time made our way to the ground floor. As we rolled into the lobby, Jovana handed me my release papers, which to my surprise, and likely Dr. Clarkin’s, we both had signed.
More security and hospital officials met us, and I handed them my papers for review. One of them asked me for an autograph, which I happily obliged.
As Jovana pushed me toward the front entrance, a couple, who looked to be in their late sixties, made their way toward me. “It’s your Uncle Fred and Aunt Marie, they came to pick you up—why don’t you go give them a hug.”
I looked quizzically at her, and received an annoyed “go on” nod. So I did. I stood and walked gingerly—my head feeling like a punching bag. My steps were slow, but steady, no dizziness.
“Aunt Marie” greeted me for the first time with a big hug, wrapping tightly around my bulletproof vest.
“The car is waiting outside,” Uncle Fred said, after we shook hands. They led me out the front entrance of the hospital. As we exited, I looked back to Jovana, but she was already gone.
Chapter 36
The cab dropped me off in front of my brownstone in Upper Manhattan.
There were no tearful goodbyes exchanged with Uncle Fred and Aunt Marie—just a direction to go inside and await further instructions. I had a lot of instructions at this point, but very little answers.
I entered through the ground floor entrance, and savored the smell of home, even if I’d rarely been here since relocating to Rockfield. And with Christina now traveling the world for GNZ, she no longer was my unofficial house-sitter. On the rare occasions she was in town, she shared an apartment in Hoboken with her friend Daman.
I have a cleaning service come in twice a week to keep the place up. Now that I was retired, I no longer housed sensitive information here that my rivals desired to get their hands on, so I was less paranoid about letting strangers inside. I had to admit, the place never looked better. But it also felt colder, and less homey.
I closed the front door behind me, and strolled to the French doors that led to the outside garden. It had always been my favorite part of the place—an oasis within the concrete jungle of Manhattan that always reminded me of home. The garden was still dormant in March, yet I could visualize Gwen and me planting it this spring, working in the yard like an old married couple. But for that to happen, we would have to make it through the next few months alive, which wasn’t a given.
I started to make my way up the spiral staircase when I heard a noise. Someone was upstairs, and the cleaning service wasn’t scheduled for today. This is the part where Carter would whip the gun out of the waistband of his jeans, and almost look happy about the sudden turn of events. I didn’t own a gun, but I was wearing a bulletproof vest, which might come in equally handy. It certainly did for Lauren.
I reached the second floor Great Room. With its high ceilings and natural light shining through its oversized windows, it was my favorite room in the place, and where I spent most of my time when I was here. For the most part, it looked its normal minimalist self—a desk, flat screen television, and a leather couch. A couple of paintings on the walls. The one main difference was the woman sitting on the couch with her legs tucked underneath her, and sipping on a bottled water like she didn’t have a care in the world.
An uncomfortable feeling came over me. And not just because Jovana had broken into my home.
She looked up at me. “How’s your head?”
“It has a lot of questions in it at the moment.”
“Can I get you anything for the pain?”
“They haven’t invented the drug to stop this pain, but thanks.”
“Good—it’s better you don’t take
anything. I need your mind as clear as possible. Do you understand?”
“It still feels a little cloudy, but once I got my bearings, and began moving around, I started to feel sharper.”
I knew my brief resurgence was being fueled by adrenaline. I also knew it would soon wear off, resulting in a crash.
“You deserved what you got, you know,” she said.
“Because I attempted to stop the revolution?”
“No, because you were stupid enough to take your girlfriend out with your ex. You’re going to need to be smarter if you plan to get out of this alive.”
Speaking of my girlfriend, and the main reason for my discomfort. “What are you doing in that dress?”
It was the back-less, shoulder-less, generally less-is-more dress that Gwen had worn when we spent New Year’s in the city. She’d left it here that night, and we hadn’t been back to pick it up. The vision of me and Gwen in the garden was replaced by a less happy one—Gwen walking in to discover Jovana lounging on my couch and wearing her dress.
“The nurse’s uniform wasn’t the most functional attire, and about three sizes too small.”
“Plenty of my clothes were available, and they’re quite functional—jeans, T-shirts ...”
“If you haven’t noticed, JP, I’m very much a woman.”
Oh, I had noticed. And I got the idea she was aware that I had. As much as she claimed to want my mind clear, it was in her best interests to keep me under her spell.
“It seems your reporter skills have eroded in retirement. The JP Warner I studied wouldn’t be asking me about fashion—he’d want to know what the hell I was doing in his home.”
“No—a good reporter would know that you must first return to the beginning to get the true story. So how about starting from the top?”
“Will you settle for the ending?” she said, and clicked my key chain. There was a recorder set up in the plastic car starter. I had used it to tape Lauren’s answers at dinner, but now I hoped it would tell me what happened after everything went dark.
When she played that portion that the media was now calling the ‘42nd Street Shootout’, all I could make out is what sounded like gunfire, pinging off the scaffolding, and a lot of shouting and commotion. “I take it that you were responsible for this. Who are you, and who are you working for?”
“I’m just the girl who keeps saving your ass. Now come over here so I can explain our next move.”
She patted the couch beside her. I knew getting that close would not be wise, but my legs were starting to wobble, and my head was feeling heavier by the second. And since there was no other furniture in the room, I took a seat next to her.
This did not mean I would completely cave in. “There isn’t going to be any next move until I start getting answers.”
“You’re a pain in the ass, do you know that?”
“So I’ve been told. Now tell me who you are, or get out of my house.”
Jovana sighed. “Since you’re so keen on going back to the beginning, I grew up in Serbia during the atrocities. My parents had a certain level of influence, and contacts within the United States. That allowed me to come here and study at the University of Michigan. While in college, I was approached by members of the CIA. They were short on agents in the region, who could get inside the Milošević government, and thought I would be a perfect choice.”
“So you’re CIA? That’s who ‘ours’ are—the guards, the window washer, my loving aunt and uncle?”
“I turned them down on numerous occasions. But after my parents were killed, and I returned to Serbia, things changed. I now saw it as an opportunity to get close to those who killed them.”
“And did you?”
“They won’t be harming anyone else,” she said coldly.
“Was anything you told us in Syria true? Was Milos even your brother?”
It looked like I’d set her face on fire. “Of course he was! After the civil war ended, and post 9/11, my duties shifted to the Arab world. My looks could pass for Middle Eastern, and my Arabic was strong. I’d been tracking Qwaui and Az Zahir for more than a year—I was the one who convinced them to hide out in Serbia, and proved my worth with them by setting up the deal that freed Az Zahir.
“The plan was for them to lead us to Hakim. But when there was no contact, and doubts rose that Hakim was even alive, we decided to take them out last July. That was, until a reporter named JP Warner showed up looking to do an interview, and ended up becoming front page news when he was taken hostage.”
“Was Milos CIA, also?”
“No—he worked only for me. And his mission that night was to get you and your team as far away from Qwaui as possible. He was supposed to drive you on a wild goose chase to nowhere, but Al Muttahedah was one step ahead of us.”
She grew emotional, and I gave her a moment to recover. I needed a break myself. Reliving my capture was taxing my remaining strength.
When the passion returned to her face, I said, “You used us to get your revenge on them. We were your stooges.”
“Willing stooges—you wanted them as badly as I did. I admit I took advantage of Al Muttahedah’s unhealthy obsession with you—I knew if I could get Carter to bring you along, Qwaui would open his doors to us, and give me the opportunity I needed. You were easy marks.”
“You toyed with our lives. And you brought innocent people into it—Christina had nothing to do with this.”
“Christina Wilkins can take care of herself just fine, but I understand your protectiveness. I was the same way with Milos, as were my other siblings—he was the baby of the family. And don’t act like your trip to Syria didn’t turn out well for you—you got your revenge without having the responsibility of pulling the trigger. I did all the dirty work … so a simple thank you would be appreciated.”
She wasn’t getting that anytime soon. “I’ll bet your bosses weren’t thrilled about your dirty work?”
“They would have preferred Qwaui taken alive, yes. But we got all we could out of him—you saw it with your own eyes—and we were able to recover a treasure trove of documents and computers that has set their organization back years. And my bosses got to clean everything up with the drones … they love playing with their drones. So all’s well that ends well.”
“If things ended so well, why the demotion?”
“What are you talking about?”
“One day you’re taking down Al Muttahedah’s number two man, and now you’re playing nurse for a retired reporter.”
Her confusion turned to laughter. “You really don’t see it, do you? It’s like you’re in the center of a storm and you still think it’s a sunny day.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I wasn’t demoted. I’m working on the same case I’ve been on for years … Huddled Masses is Al Muttahedah.”
Chapter 37
For once I was speechless. So Jovana did all the talking, “Do you remember a few years back when a group of contractors from Heathcott Security were taken hostage in Iraq, in the city of Basra? The company was based out of London, and the hostages were made up of Americans and British.”
I thought for a second, trying to fight through the ringing in my head, but had no recollection
“How about a caravan of civil engineers captured on the same day in southern Muthanna, near the Saudi Arabia border? They were attacked by uniformed men, posing as Iraqi police … sound familiar?”
“There were so many of those type situations that it was hard to keep track of.”
“Yes, there were a lot of hostages taken, but very little coverage by the Western media. By that time, the US had stopped caring about the war they started and tried to shove it into the back of the closet with the out-of-style shirts.”
“So you’re blaming the media for these people being kidnapped?”
“Partially. But you weren’t alone—the politicians were facing an election year and they wanted no part of hostages being paraded on the news ever
y night. Most people were very comfortable with the story being buried.”
“And this is somehow connected to this Huddled Masses group?”
“Both groups of hostages were taken to the same place. An abandoned Education Department building in Samawah.”
My memory was jarred, just as Jovana thought it might. “Nora.”
She nodded. “Nobody much cared about the hostages until a well-known reporter got too close, and was taken captive herself. Suddenly the headlines were on the front page, which got my bosses involved. The situation in Samawah became a top priority, and we sent in some of our best men to get them out.”
She held up a photo of a man I recognized. “Xavier Gallegos was a sharpshooter on our elite, and most secretive rescue team. He was the best we had.”
“He was also the guy who shot up the Scottsdale Mall last Christmas in the name of Huddled Masses.”
She held up another photo. “Timothy Wade was also part of this team.”
“The wedding in Atlanta—the one who poisoned the food, before taking his own life.”
“Now that’s the reporter I remember.”
“So you’re saying that the Huddled Masses are composed of a secret CIA-sponsored special forces unit? No wonder you don’t want the FBI, or anyone else to know.”
“I didn’t say that. We do know that Gallegos and Wade were Huddled Masses members, and they were the ones who gained access to the building where the hostages were being held, and were given the most credit for their release. It wasn’t an accident, and they weren’t releasing the hostages to safety … they were unleashing them upon an unsuspecting world.”
She reached for a folder that sat on the coffee table, and removed another photo, which she handed to me. This one of a burly, bearded man on a boat. “Jimbo Thompson—he worked for Heathcott Security, and was one of the hostages. If you haven’t figured it out by now, Heathcott was a dummy company set up by Al Muttahedah.”
Huddled Masses (JP Warner Book 2) Page 14
