by Tom Abrahams
Custos turned from the window and checked the bedside clock. He had a couple of hours until he wanted to be on his way back to the World Trade Center.
As long as the crowd and the police cleared out before then, there’d be no problems. He didn’t want to consider what would happen if there was still activity buzzing around the street.
His patient was resting comfortably. The fever gone, his breathing was syncopated, if a little rapid. His color was closer to normal. Custos quietly padded out of the room. He wanted Barçes as rested as possible.
The living room was bathed in the flashing blue and red hues from the emergency vehicles below. A short siren blast told him the ambulance was leaving the scene. He plopped into the easy chair opposite the television, hopeful that meant the rest of the responders and gawkers would disperse.
Jon Custos set an alarm on his cell phone and rested his head on the back of the chair. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the last time he’d slept.
After running on adrenaline and purpose for days, his body was revolting. His knees ached, his lower back hurt, his eyes burned. He closed his eyes, pressing tears that rolled to his ears. This would be his final respite, the last time he would dream.
He drifted off thinking about the task ahead, playing it over and over again in his mind. He could see the explosion and the ensuing panic outside the World Trade Center. It would give him time to return to the basement and cut the power.
Then he’d deliver the final blow, sacrificing himself for mankind. He wondered how that last instant would be. Would the searing heat consume him first? Would the explosion instantaneously obliterate him? Would there be pain? If so, for how long?
It was inconsequential. It would be whatever it would be.
At least he knew what was coming. Fernando Barçes did not. Not really.
By the time he figured it out, it wouldn’t matter. He’d be in a billion unrecognizable pieces, splattered from one side of the street to the other, blended with the hundred others unfortunate enough to be unwitting martyrs for a cause they didn’t know existed.
But what a cause it was! The transformation of the Western world into a homogenous protectorate. It would start with only a few countries, but would spread quickly east. Before long, it would truly be one world. And it would begin with him.
“A Deo et Rege,” echoed in his mind as he fell asleep. “A Deo et Rege.”
CHAPTER 44
HOUSTON, TEXAS
It was getting dark outside and the barista shot Dillinger Holt a nasty look. She’d gone from welcoming, to pleasant, to tolerant during the course of the day he’d spent occupying a table in the café. Now Dillinger was convinced she hated him.
“Could I get another espresso? I’ll tip you three times the cost of the coffee.”
The barista huffed and wiped her hands on her apron. Rolling her eyes, she stepped to the espresso machine, cranking it to life.
Holt checked his email again. Nothing. It was in the middle of the night in Europe, but he was impatient. He needed a quick something to satiate his editor’s appetite.
He scrolled through his recent calls, found the right one, and called it. It rang twice before Matti Harrold answered the phone.
“What do you have for me?” he asked without saying hello.
“Seriously?”
“You promised me new information. I haven’t heard from you. I’ve got to post something soon. I can’t wait to write about the fireworks after the smoke has cleared. I need something ahead of the explosion.”
“Poor choice of words.”
“Sorry. Newsroom humor.”
“I’ve been kinda busy, Dillinger.”
“Look, you called me, Matti. You offered me reportable information. Give me something.”
She sounded out of breath, as if she were running or walking quickly. “I’ve been busy. I haven’t forgotten about you.”
“Good to hear.” Holt took the cup and saucer from the barista and handed her a ten-dollar bill. She took the bill and smirked. She was cute, Holt thought. With her hair pulled back, she looked a little like Karen.
“I really don’t have time right now,” Matti insisted.
“Give me a nugget,” he pressed. “Give me something I can verify on my own. I’ll do the legwork.”
“Hang on,” Matti relented. She was talking to someone, her voice muffled. Holt couldn’t decipher the conversation, but the other person was a man.
“Thank you,” Holt called out to the barista, toasting her with the coffee cup. “I appreciate it.” She saluted him sarcastically. He imagined she’d reached her executive potential with an attitude like that and was forever destined to wear a name tag with her name written in Sharpie.
“Here’s something,” Matti said. “There was a murder in the same hotel playing host to the G12 and it’s been buried. Barcelona police worked it. The victim was a Canadian flight attendant. The suspect is missing and may also be responsible for the disappearance of a hotel employee.”
“Do you have names?” Holt typed on his laptop, playing catch-up with the information Matti was quickly unloading.
“No.”
“Is the suspect identified?”
“There’s video of him.”
“Do they know his name?”
“I don’t know what they know,” Matti said coyly, and Holt knew she was holding back.
“Do you know his name?”
“Jon Custos,” she said with hesitation. “That’s on background and not reportable unless someone tells you on the record he’s suspected of being involved.”
“How do you know his name?” He clicked the keys as he spoke. His questions were as much for information as they were a stalling tactic to give him time to finish his notes before she spoke again.
“I just do.”
“C’mon, Matti,” he whined. “How do you—”
“I gotta go. I’ll get back to you. You’ve got enough for now.”
“Yeah, but it’s the middle of the night there. I can’t confirm anything.”
Matti didn’t answer.
“Matti? Matti, can you hear me?” He pulled the phone from his ear to look at the screen. She’d hung up.
“Fu—” Holt stopped himself, remembering he was in public. He swigged his coffee with one hand and rubbed his neck with the other. Matti Harrold had given him a goldmine then took the pickaxe with her.
“Think.” He thumped at his forehead with the side of his fist. “Think, Dillinger.”
Who could he call who might have information? Who might know something about a murder in Spain? Who would be working late enough to answer their phone at eight o’clock at night?
Maybe it was the jolt of caffeine or the genius of exhaustion that struck. Perhaps it was just the dumb luck of an experienced reporter. But Holt had an idea.
He scrolled through his contacts, found the one he was looking for, and pressed send. The person on the other end answered after a single ring.
“Department of Homeland Security,” answered a pleasant voice, “this is Redden.”
“Rick, it’s Dillinger Holt.”
“Dillinger Holt,” repeated Rick Redden. “My favorite reporter named after a gangster.”
“Do we need to go there?”
“What was your middle name again?” Redden went there.
“You know my middle name.”
“I just like hearing you say it,” said Redden. “Your dad had the best or worst sense of humor in the history of baby naming.”
“Not cool.”
“I’m just kidding.” Redden laughed at himself. “What do you need? It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, it has been. My fault. No excuses. I owe you dinner.”
“Old Ebbitt’s?”
“Sure thing. I need some information.”
“Do I need to go secure?”
“Yes.”
“Hang on. Let me call you right back.” The line went dead. Twenty seconds later Holt’s phone bu
zzed in his hand.
“So what’s the information?” Redden asked.
Holt knew if it was possible to get any confirmation out of Spain, Rick Redden was the man to make it happen. The two had been college roommates. One went to the dark side, digging for dirt, spreading information that was sometimes only mostly true, and worked hard to climb the rungs of power and influence. The other had gone into politics. Despite taking two different paths, they’d remained friends.
“I got a tip there was a murder in the hotel hosting the G12. The suspect is a man named Jon Custos. Barcelona Police have video of him. He may also be responsible for the disappearance of a hotel employee.”
“How do you spell Custos?”
“C-U-S-T-O-S.”
“Do you have a nationality? Any other identifiers?”
“No.”
“Who did he kill?”
“A Canadian flight attendant.”
“Are you working the crime beat now?”
“No.”
“Sorry.” Redden laughed. “Didn’t mean to demote you. The intel is for a story?”
“Yes.”
“Usual ground rules apply?”
“Yes. You’re a second source. On background. No name, no agency. I’ll qualify it with something like ‘a source familiar with the investigation but not directly involved’. That work?”
“Yep. Give me thirty minutes. I’ve got some people who may know. If Secret Service is aware, I should be able to get you something.”
“Thanks. Old Ebbitt Grill is on me.”
“Of course it is,” Redden agreed. “Remember, I’m on a government salary.”
CHAPTER 45
PASEO DE TAULAT
BARCELONA, SPAIN
“Should you have given him so much information?” Brandon asked Matti as the last of the police cruisers rolled away from the crime scene.
“We’ve got nothing to hide,” Matti said. “We’ll need him to tell our story if we survive this.”
“Our story?” Brandon bristled. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Brandon,” Matti said earnestly, “you killed a woman the president sent to kill me. You’re standing here now trying to stop a terror attack designed to change the course of our country. I’d say it’s our story now.”
Matti took his hand and squeezed it before stepping into his body and wrapping her arms around him. He hesitated before he put his hands on her shoulders and slid them down to the small of her back.
“We’re in this together,” she said. “Like it or not, you’re stuck with me.” She buried her face in his chest. His heart thumped with excitement. His fingers slid from her back to the curve of her hips.
“We—we should get going.” Brandon cleared his throat and gently pushed himself away, leaving his hands on her hips. “I’m running out of time, and now might be our only chance to check the apartment.”
Matti wondered if she’d misread his signals. She searched his eyes for the answer but couldn’t find it. He looked away, his eyes dancing in every direction but hers. Matti blinked back her disappointment and immediately refocused on the job.
“Yes,” she said, brushing her top for no apparent reason. “Of course. Let’s go.”
Together they walked across the street and down a block to the oddly hued apartment building next to the pharmacy. Matti stepped up the concrete stoop and tried the glass door, tugging on it.
“It’s locked,” she said. “What do we do?”
Brandon climbed the steps, cupped his hands at his temples, and pressed them to the glass door. He stood there for a moment before backing away.
“What?” Matti asked. “Did you see something?”
“No,” he said. “Well, maybe.”
Matti turned to the door and repeated Brandon’s efforts. She didn’t notice whatever it was he’d seen.
“What?” she asked.
“There’s a wooden door on the opposite end of the hallway. It’s past the stairs. Looks like it might be another entrance. Maybe it’s unlocked.”
“Should we try it?”
“I think so. We won’t lose anything. Standing here outside of a locked door gets us nothing.”
They walked around the edge of the building, sidestepping their way through a narrow, dank alleyway between the apartment building and another stuccoed high-rise next to it. Matti sidestepped the puddles dotting the alley, visible only by the light reflecting from them.
She turned the corner behind Brandon and found herself at the back side of the building alongside large gray, brown, and blue trash containers. The odor was nauseatingly sweet and she covered her nose with her forearm as Brandon led her to the wooden door he’d seen from the other side of the building.
“It’s open,” Brandon said, turning to Matti, his hand on the doorknob.
“That’s good, right?”
“I don’t know.”
*
Helping Fernando Barçes down the steps was more difficult than Custos had anticipated. So much of this mission was, in reality, more difficult than he’d anticipated.
“Venga, viejo.” Custos willed the man as he guided him down the stairs like a wounded soldier, holding Barçes’s arm around his neck. “Our destiny awaits us.”
Custos was wearing a wig and large black-framed eyeglasses. Though it wasn’t a foolproof disguise, it was enough for his purposes. A duffel bag was strapped to his back like a messenger bag. In the bag was the magical Russian device that matched the one inside Fernando Barçes, white electrical tape, a black magic marker, and plastic tie wraps.
It was less than an hour before their final sunrise. When the crowd and police finally cleared the street, Custos decided it was time to move. While they slowly navigated their way toward the first floor, Custos heard a banging at the front door.
He stopped, helped Barçes to sit on the landing between the second and first floor, and peeked over the railing toward the glass front door. A man and then a woman were peering through the glass. They must not have been residents, because they didn’t have keys to open the door.
Custos waited for them to disappear, and then he quickly pulled Barçes to his feet and to the first floor’s rear service entrance. It was the door through which residents emptied their trash into the city’s color-coded receptacles.
He pushed through the door and, without bothering to shut it behind him, moved as quickly as he could to the corner. Barçes did a remarkable job of keeping up as they limped around the corner and hailed a cab.
“Un buen trabajo, viejo,” Custos said as he settled into his seat. “You did a good job. I’m impressed.”
The old man’s chest was heaving and his face was etched with the pain of labored breathing. He tried breathing through his nose, but Custos could tell it wasn’t providing enough air.
“Only a few minutes,” Custos said, “and we’ll be there. Just hang in there for a few minutes more.”
As they approached the beach and turned parallel to the coast, the sky took on a more purple hue. The sun was just below the horizon of the Mediterranean. Custos looked past Barçes through the rear driver’s side window. The sting of tears welled in his eyes and he knuckled them away. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek.
Focus.
The cab rolled within two blocks of the World Trade Center and Custos told the driver to let them out. The driver barked he needed more of a warning but stopped nonetheless, and he gratefully took fifty euro without further complaint.
Custos plunked Barçes onto a stone bench on the side of the road and leaned him against the back. Barçes mumbled something unintelligible and tugged his sweaty shirt. It was sticking to his chest.
Custos knelt in front of the bench and unzipped his duffle bag. He fished around, plucking out his supplies.
“Sit still,” Custos instructed as he laced tie wraps around the old man’s ankles and then connected them with a third looped plastic tie. He left enough slack to allow Barçes to shuffle, but not eno
ugh to do much more than that. He took Barçes’s wrists and repeated the process. Then he took a long piece of electrical tape, ripped it from the roll, and stuck it to the edge of the bench. He took the black marker and wrote on the tape G12 POLITICAL PRISONER. He pulled the tape from the bench and affixed it to Barçes’s face, covering his mouth.
“This will keep you from saying something you shouldn’t.” Custos slapped the old man’s leg and spun on the bench to him. He looked across the boulevard to the beach and beyond. The sun was minutes from crowning at the horizon. It was worth sitting in quiet for a few minutes more. He pushed the glasses up on his nose and whistled.
It was the overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute, one of Sir Spencer’s favorite classical pieces. A two-part opera, it was unique because it consisted of both sung and spoken word. He stopped whistling and whispered the opening lines from the “chosen one”, Prince Tamino.
“Help me! Oh, help me or I am lost, condemned as sacrifice to the cunning serpent,” he said, his eyes vacant as he stared at the rising sun. “Merciful gods! It’s coming closer! Ah! save me, ah! Defend me!”
*
Matti followed Brandon up the steps, holding onto the iron rails as she navigated the dark stairwell from the first floor. The smell of late dinners lingered in the heavy, warm air as she climbed, feeling the remnants of peeling paint slide along her palm as she moved upward.
They reached the janitor’s floor and quietly moved along the hallway toward his apartment. The only ambient light came from windows at either end of the hall.
“I think this is it.” Brandon stopped at a door and slid his hand along the jamb. “Somebody’s broken in here or used a lot of force to gain entry.”
“Why do you say that?”
Brandon gripped the door handle and turned. It cranked open with ease, and the door hung funny in the open frame.
“It’s off kilter,” he said, holding his hand up to stop Matti in the hall. “Wait here.”
Matti ignored him and was a step behind him as they entered the apartment. What hit her first was the odor. It smelled like a locker room, but worse. There was a hint of antiseptic, like a hospital or a nursing home. It wasn’t enough to mask the strong suggestion of decay.
