by Tom Abrahams
He passed the monument and crossed the circular square to the Rambla del Mar, the seaside promenade adjacent to a beautiful marina. Custos looked north, his eyes dancing along the forest of sailboat masts dotting the Reial Club de Barcelona.
Without taking his eyes from the swaying masts, he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed. The flight attendant answered on the first ring, and after he apologized for ringing her earlier than planned, she offered to meet him at one of the restaurants lining the beach. He’d suggested room service instead. His treat. She devoured the invitation and gave him her room number. He’d be there in ten minutes, he told her.
“Back to work,” he mumbled to himself and turned his back on the masts. In one pocket he held onto his phone. In the other, he played with a set of keys.
Ahead of him, to the south of the Rambla del Mar, Custos noticed flashing police lights and heard the overmodulated, unintelligible instructions of an officer on a bullhorn. Beyond the lights, as he walked closer, he could see a group of demonstrators corralled in an area at the edge of the man-made peninsula on which the World Trade Center and its adjacent hotel were perched.
The demonstrators, who numbered no more than fifty, were protesting the upcoming G12 summit. They were chanting and thrusting posters up into the air. The police, in full riot gear, were surrounding them.
Custos overheard a pair of officers talking about the demonstrators. The day before there were just a dozen of them. Now there were four times as many. They anticipated thousands by the time the summit started in two days.
As he approached the western entry to the peninsula, an officer held up his hand, asking Custos to stop. After a few questions, he let Custos walk past a single row of wooden barricades toward the World Trade Center and the Eurostars Grand Marina Hotel.
Custos ignored the chants and the occasional wail of a siren as he neared the hotel entrance. The large building was designed to embody the spirit of an ocean liner, its lines curved and sloped like that of a ship in port.
At the entrance to the hotel, protected by a series of two-foot-high cornet pillars, he found the doors protected by armed guards. He was stopped from entering the hotel, despite insisting he was there to visit a guest.
“I am sorry, sir,” said a black-suited man with a deep tan, which made his teeth appear impossibly white. “You must have a key. Or you must have an escort who has a key. It is a safety measure. I am hopeful you understand.”
Custos called up to the flight attendant. She apologized and assured her guest she’d be downstairs immediately. He’d barely replaced the phone in his pocket when she fluttered through the front door and instructed the tan man to allow her guest inside the hotel.
“I’m so glad you called me,” she said breathlessly, skipping through the polished travertine lobby toward a spiral staircase. “I wasn’t sure you really would.” She reached back to grab his hand and pulled him up the stairs, gliding to the second level and to a bank of elevators.
“We didn’t need to take the stairs.” She giggled, pressing an elevator call button. “I just love the romance of it. A spiral staircase? It’s so magnificent. It makes me feel like Scarlett O’Hara. You know? Gone With The Wind.”
Custos smiled at her, his fingers still entwined with hers. He’d play the suitor for now. There was no harm in allowing her the fantasy for a while longer.
The elevator door opened and she pulled him inside. She keyed her floor, the doors shut, and she turned to face him. Keeping his head down to avoid the security camera mounted in the ceiling, he took her shoulders and spun her around so his back was to the fish-eye lens.
“So, Mr. Vasconselos,” she purred. “What’s for dinner?” She took his other hand and pulled it around to the small of her back.
He looked down at her and the counterintuitive innocence of her face. Her cheeks were round, her almond eyes framed by long lashes. Her lips were thin but nicely shaped around a warm smile. She was a pretty woman, and more so without the requisite makeup of her job.
He leaned over and kissed her. She closed her eyes as he pressed his lips onto hers. She let go of his hands and drew hers to the back of his head. Had he not pulled away, they’d have missed their floor.
Giggling and walking on her toes, she led him down the hall. She opened the door to room 3669 and tossed the key onto a sleek wooden table near the entry. Custos took note of the room as she made her way to the large bed. The furnishings had a Scandinavian flair; they were modern and artful but utilitarian. The large picture windows opposite the entry overlooked the concrete peninsula. She didn’t have an ocean view, but that was good.
“You are anxious,” he said to the flight attendant, who sat on the edge of the bed. “You need patience.”
“Why is that?” She bit her lower lip and loosened the top button of her blouse.
“Because the anticipation is often more powerful than the act itself,” he said, knowing his intention was lost on her. “I enjoy the anticipation.” He walked to the window and drew the curtains. Even at this elevation, it was better to be careful.
“Then I will too.” She worked free another button.
“Perhaps,” he said, removing his jacket to drape it across a corner chair, his eye catching a glimpse of the room key on the wooden table nearby. “Perhaps.”
An hour later, she’d long stopped enjoying anything. Her room key was stuffed into Custos’s pants pocket. On his head was a pink and white Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap he found when emptying her baggage.
He locked her door behind him, placing a “Do Not Disturb” tag on the handle, and worked his way through the hotel’s labyrinth and to the World Trade Center with its enormous conference rooms and banquet halls.
Custos would flash the room key when challenged by the occasional security guard, and they’d let him pass with little more than a suspicious look. He found a service elevator and, after fumbling to find the right key, activated the call button and descended to the basement.
Custos knew from having viewed schematics of the building where he would find soft spots and access points. He needed to familiarize himself with more than two-dimensional drawings. He needed to feel the space, gain a poacher’s familiarity with it.
He was alone in the basement, walking with purpose from one end of the building to the other. He pulled the ball cap low over his eyes. Though he imagined his hulking frame would give him away if he became a target, at least his face and bald head wouldn’t be instantly recognizable to the growing security force.
Stopping at one end of the building near a storage supply closet, he checked his keys. Guessing, he found the right one to access the closet and entered the room filled floor to ceiling with cleaning supplies, lightbulbs, batteries, and spare parts.
Large metal storage racks framed the room on all four sides. Custos picked the one on the right, tested its strength, and climbed up the half dozen shelves to reach the ceiling. He wrapped his left arm around one of the vertical support beams on the metal rack and used his right to poke a two-by-two composite ceiling tile. It came loose without much effort, so Custos climbed higher. He shoved aside some cans of paint thinner on the top shelf and positioned his body such that he could use both hands to access the space above the ceiling.
Poking his head inside and using his phone flashlight to see, he surveyed the cavernous space above the ceiling. There were electrical conduits, plumbing pipes and joints, and other mechanical features that were all labeled. Arrows pointed flow and direction. Numbers corresponded to rooms and halls he knew were listed on the schematics he’d studied.
This would be so much easier than he’d anticipated.
It was as if he was destined to facilitate the new world order.
“A Deo et Rege,” he mumbled.
CHAPTER 20
TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER
HOUSTON, TEXAS
The assassin closed the stainless steel door, sliding it shut with a final heave. The freezer cabinets weren’t designed to
hold two bodies.
Karen was a tall woman. Despite her slender, enviable figure, the assassin struggled to accommodate her in the narrow drawer atop the nameless woman she’d pretended was her mother. The assassin rubbed the goose bumps on her forearms before pulling out her phone to send a text message:
done with first. on to second.
She slipped the phone back into her bag along with her visitor’s badge, Karen’s phone, eyeglasses, car keys, and the red-stained pencil she’d acquired from Karen’s bun. Then she punched in the passcode to exit the room and welcomed the relative warmth of the hallway, casually striding through the maze of hallways, her heels clicking on the linoleum.
At the front of the building, before she reached the coded door leading to the lobby, she encountered the guard. He tilted his head. His eyes narrowed.
“Weren’t you escorted by Dr. Corvus?” He stood from his bar-height seat and planted his hands on his hips.
“I was.” The assassin smiled. “She had to stop to use the ladies’ room. She told me to go ahead and sign out.”
“I’m going to need you to stay here until she catches up.” The guard rubbed his forehead with one hand and took a step toward the assassin. “And where is your visitor’s badge? I’ll need that back. You should have been wearing it. All of this is highly irregular.”
She patted her chest as if looking for the missing badge. “I’m so sorry. I think I slipped it into my bag.” She unzipped the bag and stuffed her hand inside. As she fished through the contents of the bag, she subtly stepped closer to the guard.
“You said she went to the bathroom?” He looked past her, down the hall, craning his neck toward the water fountain flanked by bathroom doors. “And she told you to leave on your own?”
“Yes.” She nodded, her eyes smiling from her cheeks. “She was such a sweet lady.” The assassin slid another step toward the guard. Her eyes darted from his glare to his neck and then to his hands. She kept digging around in her bag, blindly searching its contents.
“Did you determine the woman you were here to see was your mother?” He bit his lower lip, knitted his brow.
“Yes.” The assassin nodded, calling on tears, which welled immediately.
“Oh.” The guard’s stance softened. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” She shook off the faux melancholy and looked into her bag. “Here it is.”
“Wait a second.” The guard held up his hand.
“What?” The assassin looked up, her eyes wide and her hand still in the bag.
“You said Dr. Corvus was a sweet lady?” The guard put his hand on his hip above his Taser. “That’s an odd—”
Before he could finish his thought, the assassin pulled her hand from the bag. In her fist was Karen’s pencil. With one single, artful movement, she drove the sharp end of the pencil into the guard’s throat, removed it from the puncture and plunged it deep into his right ear.
The wounds, she knew from experience, were not fatal. But they were effective.
His hearing was likely ruined in the one ear. The pencil tip passed through the tympanic membrane and cochlea before tearing part of the audiovestibular nerve. It was so painful the guard likely wasn’t even aware of the thick ache from the initial wound. That puncture to the throat was expertly placed between the guard’s Adam’s apple and the cricoid cartilage. It was essentially an unnecessary tracheotomy. Air oozed from the hole, blood leaking in tiny bubbles that oozed and popped against his neck.
As he writhed on the floor, grabbing his throat with one hand and his ear with the other, she bent down onto one knee. The goose bumps returned to her arms.
“You’ll be fine,” she advised. “You really should have let me leave without the hassle.”
His eyes were wild, pupils smaller than the holes in his throat and ear. She knew he wasn’t registering what she was saying, but she was compelled to speak with him nonetheless. She smiled at him and stood over him for moment before punching the exit button to the lobby.
She started to leave, then turned and walked back to the welcome desk. She pulled the clipboard through the opening in the thick glass and signed out.
“Wouldn’t want to break the rules,” she mumbled. “That would be highly irregular.”
By the time a custodian found the guard passed out and wheezing through the hole in his neck, the assassin was downtown in Karen’s Saab, looking for a free parking spot along the curb in front of Treebeard’s restaurant. She was craving something spicy.
Over a bowl of beans, rice, and andouille sausage, she scrolled through Karen’s phone. She found photographs from trips to the beach, nights out with girlfriends, and a happy-looking mutt with a purple tongue.
The contact list was relatively short, and several of the entries were listed by what the assassin assumed were nicknames. There was no listing for Dillinger or Holt. On a second scroll, she noticed an entry for “Dolt” with a 703 area code. The number matched a couple of incoming calls.
The assassin put the phone on the table and looked across the busy dining room. Businessmen and women were going about their lives blindly. They sucked down their drinks and shoveled plates full of food into their mouths.
Oblivious.
She rolled her eyes at one man in particular. He was wearing an expensive-looking suit, the jacket draped over the back of his chair. He kept fiddling with his onyx and silver cufflinks, chatting up the young woman sitting across from him. He’d occasionally rattle his wrist, revealing what the assassin imagined was a pricey Swiss watch. The man thought he was a player, his arrogance seeping from his laser-cleaned pores.
He was clueless with no idea of the forces that secretly controlled his existence.
A puppet.
She raked her fork across the bottom of her bowl and plucked the last piece of andouille with its tines. She pulled the piece of meat into her mouth and chewed it, mashing it into smaller and smaller pieces before swallowing.
The assassin wiped the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin and took a final swallow of ice water. She picked up Karen’s phone and sent a text message to Dolt.
Would love to see you again. Tonight?
A minute later, Dillinger Holt responded.
Of course. I’m stuck here for a couple of days. You’ll make it worth it. Where?
The assassin smirked and considered her response. She remembered from the dinner receipt she’d found that they’d had drinks.
Your hotel. Remind me though. I was a bit tipsy. What hotel and room #?
Holt responded with the information. The assassin used Karen’s phone to input the hotel into the GPS application. She was close.
So was the end of the mission.
CHAPTER 21
CAMP DAVID
CATOCTIN MOUNTAIN PARK, MARYLAND
Matti sat across from the president in the Aspen Lodge meeting room. They were alone. It was late in the day. Matti was hungry and tired and fighting against the urge to pill pop.
“What’s going on with you, Matti?” President Jackson sounded like the frustrated mother of a teenager. At least that was how Matti imagined a mother would sound.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m getting tired of having these conversations. You’re clearly distracted. You’re not the heroine I hired. Out with it.”
Matti threw caution to the wind before she had a chance to think about it. As soon as the words jumped from her lips, she regretted having said them.
“Saw who?” The president leaned on her elbows and pressed against the table toward Matti.
“Sir Spencer Thomas.”
“Where?” The president’s eyes narrowed. “On television?”
“No. I saw him here. With you.”
President Jackson’s eyes widened and she threw back her head in laughter.
“It’s not funny.” Matti wasn’t amused by the charade. “Why is he here?”
The president shook her head and planted her palms flat against the table.
“Oh, it’s not funny. I’m laughing at the ridiculousness of it.”
“Why is he here?” Matti studied her boss. The president was either telling the truth or was pathological. She wasn’t giving anything away.
“He’s not, Matti.”
“I saw him. You were with him in one of the cabins on the northern end of the property. I was jogging by. I saw you both.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Really?” The president lowered her voice. “Are you really sure? What you’re suggesting…”
Matti considered the president’s conviction, her measured but firm response. She paused, flexed her hand, and nodded.
“First of all—” President Jackson sighed “—I’m going to forgive the treachery of your allegation and talk this through with you as someone who cares deeply about your well-being.”
Matti slunk back against her chair, folding her arms across her chest. She didn’t want a lecture, but she’d quickly lost control of the conversation.
“I know you’re an addict, Matti. I’ve known it for a while. I’ve overlooked it, and maybe I’ve enabled you. That’s my fault.”
“I’m not—”
“Let me finish.” The president held up her hand, stopping Matti mid-defense. “I’ve seen your hands shake. I’ve noticed the mood swings, the dark circles under your eyes from insomnia. You’re struggling, I get that. Whatever it is you think you saw was a figment of your drug-addled imagination.”
Matti tried looking the president in the eyes, but couldn’t. Instead, she focused on the table in front of her. Her head was down.
“You’re searching for something, Matti,” the president suggested. “You can’t accept you did everything you could to stop the terrorists. Now you’re on some ridiculous mission to redeem yourself. I hear it in the way you talk; I see it in the things you do. And I know about Bill Davidson’s journal.”
