“Yes. He’s totally different. Here we go, sir.” Mark un-holstered his Beretta and checked the chamber.
The man was directly in front of the car, trying to peer in the windows.
Mark was out in a flash, gun drawn, held low against his hip. He quickly frisked the man, had him leave his shoes on the curb, then accompanied him into the back of the car. Once in, he held the gun firmly against the man’s temple.
Mark said, “Hold your hands out in front of you, wrists together.”
The man obeyed and Mark used plastic military-style handcuffs to secure his hands.
This guy was a cool customer. He didn’t seem worried or concerned at all.
“Who are you?” Mortimar asked tersely.
“I am Uri Andropov, the man you hired to follow archeologist Thomas McAlister in order to obtain the Blue Beryl. I am here because we agreed to meet at 1:30 p.m. today.” When he spoke his jaw was completely immobile. Mortimar could see blue tape running back towards his ears from the corners of him mouth.
“You lie! Uri Andropov got out of this car not ten minutes ago.”
“No. I am Uri. I am The Clone.”
In the pit of his stomach Mortimar knew this man was telling the truth. This man was Uri. He looked and acted like an Eastern European. The accent, though muted by his immobile jaw, was real. By contrast it made the other Uri, the imposter, seem like an amateur.
“What in the hell was going on here!” Mortimar yelled, spittle flying at a ninety-degree angle from the side of his face with no cheek.
“There was a man just here. He said he was Uri. He acted as if his jaw was wired shut too. What the fuck is going on here?”
“I am who I say I am. I’m Uri Andropov. I am here at our agreed-upon time. Whatever you’re talking about, whoever was here, was an imposter. I am Uri, codename The Clone. I am the man you hired to obtain the Blue Beryl.”
“A man claiming to be you was with us not more than ten minutes ago. He delivered the Blue Beryl and took $10 million in cash. Your $10 million. You’re not him. You look a little like him. But you’re not him.”
The man sat silently.
The Ghoul paused. “Prove to me you’re Uri.”
“My nickname is The Clone. I’m currently working for you, Sam. My assignment was to follow archeologist Thomas McAlister. I was to wait until he found an ancient healing book, the Blue Beryl, and then take it from him and deliver it to you today at 1:30.”
“Yes, yes, you’ve said all of that.”
“Two days ago I sent you a message saying I’d been badly injured while operating undercover outside of the Dakota. I told you I needed a trustworthy doctor. You recommended Robert Winchester. You said you would make sure he was ready for me. He was. He reconnected my jaw, sewed my kneecap back in place and fixed my cheeks. You can see they’re still being held together on the outside with the glue and tape.”
Mortimar looked at Mark. Mark said, “I don’t think that’s possible. He wouldn’t be here if all that had happened two days ago.”
Uri addressed Mark. “It is possible. Two things: high pain threshold resulting from years of de-sensitivity training, mixed with mild painkillers.”
Mark had heard of Spetznaz and other Eastern martial arts cultures using de-sensitivity training on their elite troops. He’d seen films of Korean men in GIs running up snow-covered mountains barefoot.
“Your face would be swollen.” Mark said.
“Winchester wired my jaw, sewed my cheeks on the inside and then used tubes to drain the swelling. In addition to the painkillers, I’m taking anti-inflammatories.”
Mark shrugged, looked at Mortimar and said, “It’s not likely, but I guess it’s possible.”
“So it was not you who called and asked that our meeting be moved up by thirty minutes?”
“No. We agreed to meet at 1:30. I’m here.”
“Where is the book?”
“I’ve had it twice, both times only for a moment. The first time I was attacked seconds after I took it from Dr. Bertram.”
“By whom?”
“A federal agent. A professional. He shot my kneecap off and broke my jaw. I was unconscious just long enough for him to take it from me, but I was able to get away. But without the book.”
“That was when you contacted me.”
“Yes.”
“I still can’t believe you got away on foot with those injuries.”
“I cannot, will not, be locked up. When I decide I want something I cannot and will not be stopped.”
“You decided you wanted the book, yet you were stopped.”
“It is not over.”
“Who was the federal agent? What was his interest?”
“I had no idea, so I had a colleague hack into the FBI incident database logs.”
“How?” Mortimar asked.
“FBI case-log encryption is relatively simple and easy to hack. Nothing like the NSA’s. I searched by date and found the incident report. It was submitted by DJ Warrant because the police were involved. Once I had his name and address I went to his house outside of Washington, DC. I needed a disguise and decided to use McAlister. Warrant hates McAlister.”
Mortimar nodded.
“I subdued him and tortured him to find out where he’d hidden the book. I found the book. I was . . . clearing the scene of anything incriminating when I heard a sound outside the window. It was McAlister. We fought and he shot me with a tranquilizer dart.” Uri reached inside his jeans pocket and pulled out a small projective. “Here it is.” He tossed it to Mark.
“When I woke up, my disguise had been torn from my face and McAlister was gone. He’d taken the book. He found my car and took the girl, my appointment book and my makeup supplies.”
Mortimar shook his head.
Uri couldn’t tell if he was sad or angry.
“Was our meeting today listed in the appointment book?”
“Yes, but encoded.”
“How?”
“Caesar shift.”
Mark spoke up. “Easy to break.” Neither man looked at him.
Mortimar glared at Uri. He knew the man was telling the truth, but didn’t want to admit or believe it. He held up the fake Blue Beryl and shook it in the air. “Then who was the man who was just here in this car? The man who looked like the spitting image of you? The man who sold me this fake?”
“The only person who may have been able to see what I really look like is McAlister.”
After a long silence, Uri said, “May I look at that book?”
Mortimar nodded and Mark used his knife to cut the restraints.
Uri rubbed his wrists, then extended his hand to take the book.
He quickly paged through it, occasionally stopping to feel the consistency of an individual page.
Finally he said, “This is not the Blue Beryl. I carried it, and then later quickly looked at it at Agent Warrant’s house. This is definitely not it.”
Mortimar faced the window, but looked inward. That was it. That was what had bothered him earlier. He had held the page taken from the doctor who’d been healing the blind. That paper had been thicker, heavier, than the pages of this book.
Anger and hatred, his two favorite emotions, began to boil within him. He was beginning to understand the enormity of the con.
What words had The Clone himself used in a recent field report? He’d said McAlister was an adept con man. McAlister had been in his car not ten minutes ago and Mortimar had giddily handed him a briefcase with $10 million in cash. For nothing.
There was only one thing Mortimar hated more than a bad business deal, and that was being tricked.
Slowly, in a low voice, Mortimar said, “Four people, Uri—you, Dr. Bertram, DJ Warrant and I—have tried to take the Blue Beryl from McAlister. Yet he currently has possession. Three of the people are seriously injured. The fourth is significantly poorer.”
Uri nodded. “Can we be sure it was McAlister?”
“Had to be. As you say, he
knew what you looked like. He got the real Blue Beryl from Warrant’s house. He had your appointment book.” Mortimar’s gruesome face contorted. “What I can barely stand is that he was here only minutes ago. He’s taken my money, your money, and left us with a forgery. It would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.”
Uri said, “Funny thing is, all McAlister wanted was this book. He got it two nights ago at Warrant’s house. He didn’t have to come here today.”
Mortimar’s neck and face turned bright red. In an angry, gravelly voice he said, “Yes, that’s true. He really stuck it to me today, didn’t he?”
Mark spoke up again, “Looks like McAlister cloned The Clone.”
Uri glared at him.
He shrugged. “Sorry.”
In the minutes after Mark’s comment an eerie silence fell over the occupants of the car. In those minutes, Mortimar realized what it must be like to be targeted by an assassin as dangerous as Uri.
Looking into Uri’s obsidian eyes, it took only a split second for him to understand the difference between himself, a person who could order someone killed—and Uri, a person who could kill in cold blood, face to face.
He wished he had not allowed Mark to cut Uri’s restraints.
And now an electric intensity had entered the back of the limousine. The desire to extract revenge on McAlister became palpable.
The limousine began to feel small and claustrophobic. Both Mortimar and Uri noticed Mark’s knuckles turning white as his hand tightened around the grip of his automatic.
Mark was a seasoned operator, yet if it came to violence Mortimar somehow knew Mark was no match for the man sitting across from them. Uri was off the deep end crazy. Sociopath-crazy.
Uri broke the tension. “I will pursue McAlister. It will be at no extra charge to you. I will recover the book and the money. I will bring you both. If, at that time, you believe I should be compensated, fine. If not, I understand. I did not deliver on the timeline we’d initially agreed to. That’s how I work. That’s my proposal.”
Inwardly Uri also reviewed the list of other items he already planned to take, or take back, from McAlister: his favorite make-up case, his missing identification papers, his appointment book, and Lisa.
“I think that is fair.”
“Then it is settled.” Uri reached for the door handle, and as he did Mark put his gun away.
“Oh, Uri.” Mortimar said.
Uri turned, “Yes.”
“I’m sorry about your jaw. Mine’s been broken too. I know how painful it can be.”
“The jaw will heal. The masseter muscles will be atrophied, but I will strengthen them once the wires are cut. My knee will heal. And, then, I will use everything—knee, teeth, everything—to rip out Thomas McAlister’s still-beating heart, Aztec style. He is an amateur. It should not take me long to find him.”
Uri slid out the door, slamming it behind him, leaving both Mark and Mortimar with waves of terror running through their bodies.
He’d been to so matter-of-fact, so sure about finding and killing McAlister, that both Mortimar and Mark were wholly convinced that Uri would, in fact, rip McAlister’s still-beating heart out.
Mark sat back, realizing that he’d just been in the presence of the most frightening man he’d ever met.
Mortimar sat back and whispered, “God help us if we ever get on his bad side.”
Mark, Delta Operator and Special Forces veteran of Gulf War One and Bosnia, said nothing. He simply crossed himself.
Chapter 61
To blame Thomas McAlister once again for his current situation, failure to retain the Blue Beryl, would be wrong. DJ now realized that he’d let his vendetta against McAlister cloud his normally excellent judgment.
In trying to outmaneuver McAlister, the battle had become like the ending to a James Bond movie in which Bond is placed into death traps that are seemingly impossible to escape. Invariably Bond escapes, when all the villain had to do all along was shoot Bond at point-blank range in the head with a reasonably large-caliber handgun.
DJ was propped up in a hospital bed, IV in his left arm, and large movement-restricting bandages around his neck. The breathing apparatus that had been in place when he’d first regained consciousness had been removed.
Elmo, too, was now conscious. The blow from the man who’d attacked him on the street had crushed his skull, just above his right eye, and torn the lining, the dura, surrounding his brain. Bone fragments had to be removed, and after the neurosurgeon had sewn his dura back together, he’d put a shiny round titanium plate over the section where the bone had been.
There were eighty-eight staples running along his hairline, the edge of which curved down to form a crescent-shaped scar which looked like the business end of a sickle.
DJ and Elmo were in the same room at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital to reduce government expense. Because of the nature of their injuries, neither was given much pain medicine, so they stayed awake and talked a lot.
Elmo told DJ about his time in Tibet with McAlister, and DJ told Elmo about his mundane vice work until the beeps from his heart rate monitor begin to accelerate and Elmo would change the subject. Neither had any visitors.
DJ had no way of knowing that the man who’d attacked him was really Uri Andropov, The Clone, disguised as McAlister. No way of knowing McAlister had saved him from sure death at the hands of one of the world’s greatest assassins.
DJ was convinced McAlister had come to his house and savagely attacked him to exact revenge for DJ’s role in masterminding the planting of Elmo as Dr. Bertram and the subsequent theft of the Blue Beryl. In DJ’s mind, McAlister’s motivations were clear. DJ would’ve acted in a similar way.
The doctors told DJ his jugular had been punctured by a sharp object. Not a flat-bladed object like a knife, but a cylindrical one, like a stake. DJ convinced himself McAlister had tried to poke the vein, rather than slice it, in an effort to make it look like an accident. As if DJ had fallen on something sharp.
Then, McAlister left him for dead. An uncharacteristic, cold-blooded move.
DJ hadn’t told the police it had been McAlister who’d strangled him and stabbed his neck. If he had, they might have tracked McAlister down. DJ didn’t want that.
He would find McAlister himself. He’d had a lot of time to think it through. DJ used his convalescing time to formulate a plan.
In a few months, when he recovered, he would quit the department. He was retirement-eligible and would receive full benefits. He would track McAlister down and get revenge.
He’d decided, as McAlister had, that choking would be best. DJ would make sure that the last image McAlister ever saw was his face. He wanted his face burned into McAlister’s soul.
No longer would he try to use indirect maneuvers and departmental resources to disrupt or disappoint McAlister.
This would not be a James-Bond-style retribution. There would be no pools full of hungry sharks, no vats of hot lava or conveyer-belt crematoriums.
When he found McAlister—and he would find him—it would be simple, straight-forward, hand-administered death. Up close and personal. As, DJ now understood, it should have been from the beginning.
Chapter 62
McAlister was surprised when his cell phone rang. He thought twenty miles off the coast of Miami would’ve been out of coverage range. Apparently not.
The caller ID read Blocked call. Lisa looked at him quizzically, waiting to see if he was going to answer, before trimming the jib.
He looked at her, shrugged, and pushed the green button. “Hello?”
“You son of a bitch. You promised me, swore to me, that you would not hurt my father. How could you do this to me? How?” Ann shouted on the other end of the line.
“Ann, it wasn’t me.”
“Liar. Liar!”
“Ann, listen . . . .”
“I don’t want to listen, Thomas. I can’t listen. You swore to me. You swore . . .” Her voice trailed off, then came back loud and
clear, “You swore, you son of a bitch, and now my father is badly hurt!”
McAlister could hear her sobbing. “Ann, I know your father thinks I tried to kill him. But I didn’t. I . . .”
“Yes, you did.” She screamed so loud the small phone speaker distorted. “You did. And you did it . . . in a way that was . . . that was . . . grotesque.”
“Ann, that was a disguise artist. An assassin. He was hired by a high-powered pharmaceutical executive to steal the Blue Beryl. It was the same man your dad shot. Remember the one that got away after attacking Bertram? I mean Elmo? Remember?”
“That’s impossible. My father blew that man’s kneecap off and completely dislocated his jaw. No, Thomas. That person was gravely injured, he’s probably still in the hospital.”
“No, Ann. He’s special. He’s superhuman or something. He got up and walked away, didn’t he? Just like I did, Ann, after you shot me. He’s the one. You have to believe me. I didn’t hurt your father, I saved him from that man.”
“My father shot the man in the knee with a fucking forty-five, Thomas. That doesn’t matter anyway. He told me he saw you!”
“Ann, look. The guy is a skilled disguise artist. He got up and walked away. He probably took whatever drugs he needed to be able to keep going.”
“How would you know?”
“I know bits and pieces. Listen closely. It was not me who did that to your father. I was there that night and I saw it happening through your father’s bedroom window. The man looked exactly like me. I thought I was looking in a mirror. It almost got me killed.”
“Thomas, you cannot expect me to believe that! It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re thinking that it’s so . . . so fantastical that it has to sound real. But that’s exactly why I don’t believe you.”
“Ann, I’m on a boat right now with a woman that same man tortured and almost killed. She’s got a concussion, two black eyes, ribs held together with stainless steel screws and more than a few stitches.
“You don’t want to believe me. Your father especially doesn’t want to believe me. You and he want to believe that I hate both of you for what you did. But, Ann, I don’t. You know in your heart I would never do that to you father. Think back. You know it, Ann. You know it.”
Book of Cures (A Thomas McAlister Adventure 2) Page 25
