It wasn’t like in the movies. Taxis did not suddenly slam on the brakes and cause multiple-car pileups. Women did not start screaming on the sidewalk. Whole office buildings did not suddenly empty and people did not rush into the streets or to the tops of tall buildings. Instead, they looked out their windows, or up at the sky, and wondered.
Many, maybe most, did not credit their senses. It had to be some kind of hoax, an optical illusion. Others blessed themselves and prayed. The city’s large Hispanic community was especially devotional. Someone set up a makeshift altar in the middle of Flatbush Avenue, and thousands of devout Haitians attended Mass on the spot.
The cardinal archbishop of New York took to the Fifth Avenue steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and urged calm. So did the mayor, from his private island in the Caribbean, where he was vacationing with his mistress. The cable channels put the vision in a box and kept it on the screen at all times. Live cams streamed the image via the blogosphere across the globe.
The image took shape high in the sky in the early morning. At first it looked like nothing, mere light among light in the sky. Gradually, however, it began to assume human form. It took a while for everyone to realize that slowly, imperceptibly, it was gradually moving toward the earth, growing larger as it came into view. The progress was very slow, but it was steady. The Virgin was descending toward the earth.
Lannie Saleh, Celina Selena, and Alonzo Schmidt saw none of this. Dr. Leopold had given them carte blanche to inspect the hospital and had assigned a few trusted people to act as point men. They had to tear the place apart without alarming anybody.
“It needs a power source,” Lannie was explaining. “These things can’t work without electricity, without something to act as the trigger. The good news is, it doesn’t seem to be attached to one. The bad news is, it may not need to be. Some of the Russian designs have a transmitter that signals when its internal battery runs low and it’s thought—remember, until today, we had no proof that such devices even existed, except for the testimony of a Russian defector—that it can somehow be powered externally—”
“It can.”
Everyone turned to see the speaker. It was Tom Byrne, accompanied by Principessa Stanley.
Tom moved to the front with the ease of a natural leader. “Thanks, Lannie,” he said. “I’ll take it from here.”
“What’s she doing here?” objected Lannie.
“She’s getting the story,” replied Tom. “You got a problem with that?” He turned to the group. “We know that a psychopath named Raymond Crankheit left some sort of device in the hospital during the attack on New York. We also know that this same psychopath attacked Ms. Stanley here, buried her alive behind the Metropolitan Museum, and damn near scalped her. If anybody deserves to be in on the finish, it’s she. So that’s the last I want to hear about it.”
“Who are you?” asked Celina.
“I am Thomas Byrne, deputy director of the FBI. And these are my people.” Into the room came a dozen special agents, each one looking exactly (as Celina Selena admitted to herself later) the way everyone pictured an FBI special agent looking. “These men and women are trained in this, and they’ll find the bomb. That’s not my worry. My worry is that the bomb will find us first.”
“But what about the trigger?” asked Lannie.
“Come with me, please,” said Tom. Then, turning to his team: “Get started. From the rate of descent, it looks like we have five, maybe six hours.”
He left Principessa behind with the bomb squad and led Lannie, Celina, and Alonzo out onto the street and pointed to the sky. Celina gasped and crossed herself. “Damn,” muttered Alonzo. Lannie didn’t know what to say.
“She may look like the Virgin freaking Mary,” said Tom, “but she’s our trigger. She’s a holographic laser projection coming from the surface of the moon—no, it’s not originating there, little green men aren’t attacking. It’s a relay from the reflector shields the Apollo astronauts left behind, back in the days when this country actually got a bang for its buck, instead of just spreading the wealth around and pissing it away. She’s coming not to save humanity but to blow the shit out of the city of New York. And that’s just not going to fucking happen.”
“How do we stop it?” asked Lannie.
“We don’t.”
“What?” said Celina.
At that moment, a car pulled up in front of the hospital. A man and a woman got out. Celina recognized the man right away.
The man walked right up to the group, like he was used to being in charge.
“Hello, boss,” said Lannie.
“Hello, Frankie,” said Tom Byrne. “Keeping that temper of yours in check?”
“Cut the crap, Tom,” said Francis Byrne. “We’re only working together because we have to. Because you fucked me and turned one of my best men against me. Because you ran out on our city and took your fancy job in Washington while I’ve stayed here, year in and year out.”
“Great job you did last year,” said Tom. “How many people died again?”
And then he was on the seat of his pants on the sidewalk, his jaw smarting from the blow his younger brother had just delivered. “Say that again and I’ll shoot you myself, right here, in front all these witnesses. I’ll go to jail for murder, because I won’t miss and you know I won’t miss. And not even your boy Saleh here will try and stop me.”
Frankie turned to Lannie. His eyes reflected the pain of betrayal. “I knew it was you, Lannie. What I don’t know is why.”
“I was just . . . just trying . . .” He looked over to Tom to help him out. “He’s your brother isn’t he? They’re threatening my family, Frankie.”
“We’re your family, too, Lannie,” said Frankie. “That’s what I’ve been trying to make you understand. That’s why I took your ass off the streets of Brooklyn and made a detective out of you. I saw me in you, kid—this is New York, and we all need a rabbi. We’re all tribes here in New York, but the thing that made this city great is that the tribes learned to work with each other, learned to embrace each other—they realized that tribes are just like individuals, and that while you can’t choose your tribe, you can choose to make a new family. That’s what we all did, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians. It’s why Sy Sheinberg was a father to me, after my father—our father, Tommy—was shot down from behind in cold blood and they never found the killers. I’ve been looking for those fucking dirtbags all my life and you know what? I’m never going to find them, but I’m going to die trying. I thought I was a father to you, Lannie, just the way Sy Sheinberg was my father. Ethnicity doesn’t mean shit. Somebody’s threatening you or your family, then they’re threatening my family, too, and in New York that means I have a license to fuck them up two times—once because they’ve got it coming and twice just for laughs. Because this is my town, and I’m still the sheriff.”
He looked at Hope. “We’re going to get them. All of them. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Gardner?”
Everyone turned to look at the woman who had arrived with Byrne. Behind her, still high in the sky, floated the Virgin Mary, slowly coming down to earth.
“Right now,” she said, “my . . . husband . . . and another man are in the Middle East. What they’re doing is very dangerous. We don’t know if they’ll come back alive. But they’re there to get to the source of all this, and to put an end to it—once and for all. And we have to help them. So please don’t fight. Please, everybody, let’s work together.”
Frankie held out his hand to Tom and helped him to his feet. “Peace?” he asked.
Tom dusted himself off. “No peace,” he said. “Truce.”
“Good enough,” said Frankie. He took a reading of the apparition’s location in the sky and turned to Hope. “Relay these coordinates to your . . . husband. Even if we find the bomb, we might not be able to disarm it in time, so this is the mission timer. If they don’t get the job done . . . then my city dies.”
“I won’t let you down,” said Hope.
Byrne put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get to work, people.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Qom
“Why are you alone, sister?”
These were not words Maryam wished to hear, especially from a member of the morality police. The Iranian vice cops—“vice” in this case applying to the very existence of women—were not as notorious as the mutaween of Saudi Arabia, or the Taliban of Afghanistan, but they were plenty dangerous.
She tensed as she answered. “But I am modestly dressed, worshipping at the sacred mosque.”
They moved closer to her, boxing her in, forcing her into an alley. Maryam glanced around and saw there was nobody else in sight. Whatever was going to happen was going to have to happen fast.
“Where is your husband, sister?”
“I have . . . he is away, on state business. But he will be here soon, that I can assure you.”
“Then where is your father?”
“My father, may Allah bless him, is dead.”
“Your brother?”
“Alas, I have no brothers.”
The two police looked at each other. In Iran, with one of the highest proportions of young people in the world, everybody had brothers and sisters. She was obviously lying.
“Sister,” said the first cop, “I am afraid we are compelled by force of holy law to request that you accompany us.”
Maryam kept edging backward, into the alley, away from the crowds. She knew the religious police were lightly armed, with knives for protection and sticks with which to beat helpless women. This is what came of a country that had reduced some of the proudest, most glamorous women in the world into servile, cringing slaves. The men had no fear.
They were about to learn different. They were about to take a very fast trip from the seventh century to the twenty-first. And they weren’t going to like it very much.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we can discuss this in a more private place.”
One of the dirty little secrets of Iran was that whores flourished everywhere. Probably not since Dickensian London had the world’s oldest profession commanded such a large part of a nation’s economy, or its attention, or its fantasy life. She need not say anything, merely hint. They would get the message. They would take the bait.
The men grinned at each other. Fringe benefits were part of the job. A doorway would be good enough.
Maryam took a deep breath and said a silent prayer. This would have to be fast and lethal.
She moved back into a doorway, letting them come to her, feeling their hands on her body. She needed them to do just that, to drop their guard, to reach for her with a repressed passion that would dull their other senses until it was too late.
Closer . . . closer . . .
She raised her veil as one of them moved in to kiss her, and her hand strayed to the privates of the second cop. She could feel the first man’s mouth on hers, his tongue seeking hers, feel the tumescent excitement of the second man. . . .
Now.
She bit the tongue off and wrenched the other man down, hard. They both screamed, but their screams were immediately cut off as she drew the knife from the scabbard of the first cop and slashed his throat. Gurgling, he fell into the second man, who was still in agony. As he put up his hands to fend off the falling body, she plunged the knife into his heart. As he died, she saw the look of disbelief in his eyes, that a woman had done this to him, and then a look of bliss, as if all his suspicions of the evil sex were, by his death, finally justified.
“Fuck you,” she said in English.
She pulled both the bodies into the doorway as best she could. They’d be found almost immediately, that she knew. She wiped the knife clean of fingerprints and placed it back in its sheath.
She was wet with blood, but the blood would not show against the black of the chador, and in this heat it would dry quickly. She just had to stay away from people for a while. And wait . . . wait for him.
And then, in the greatest miracle of her life, for which she would forever give thanks and praise to Allah, there he was. She knew him immediately, saw right through his disguise, knew by the cock of his head and the way he walked, the way he moved, that it could be no other. That at last he was come, and that she was whole again, and that no matter what now happened she knew the truth.
He moved toward her quickly but without haste. Still nobody around.
“Hello, Frank,” she said quietly.
“My name’s not Frank,” he said.
“I know it isn’t,” she said. “Everything you’ve told me since the day we met was a lie.”
“Would you have had it any other way?”
“How did you find me?
In answer, he reached inside her chador, until he found what he was looking for. The smartphone with which she’d signaled him. “Thank Allah for GPS,” he said.
“You’re late.”
“And they’re dead,” he said, looking at the corpses. “So let’s ankle.”
“Home?”
He gave that look of his that she loved so well. The one that said, Are you kidding? “You are home, remember? And he’s here.” She didn’t have to ask who “he” was.
“He’s looking for her,” she replied. He didn’t have to ask who “she” was.
“Then I guess we both have jobs to do.”
“I’m not going to leave her.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“There’s more to it, right?”
“Would I be here if there wasn’t?” That was the answer she expected, but didn’t want. “We haven’t got much time and we have a lot to do, including not getting ourselves killed and saving the world, not necessarily in that order, so let’s get a move on.”
“Where?”
He brought his face close to hers. “As long as we’re together,” he said, “Qom is as good a place as any.”
“You double-crossed me, you infidel bastard,” said Col. Zarin.
“I am an infidel in many faiths,” replied Skorzeny coolly, “so please do not think that your cheap superstitious imprecations can frighten me.”
They were in the heart of the nuclear complex on the outskirts of Qom, deep inside a mountain, where the uranium-enrichment process had been taking place right under the noses of the U.N. inspectors, who preferred to look in the direction of the known facility at Natanz, rather than anywhere else, just in case they might find something. Emanuel Skorzeny had no illusions that he was allowed admittance because he was a welcome guest of the Islamic Republic. He was here because they were business partners, and the minute they ceased being business partners, his privileges would be revoked with extreme prejudice.
And he had a business deal with Col. Zarin.
“I have another proposition for you,” he said.
“I am not interested in another proposition,” replied the colonel. “You have used me, and jeopardized my future and the future of my family. They have my voice on tape, threatening this Detective Saleh, may Allah curse him and his seed. I should kill you for what you have done.”
“Not for what I have done, Col. Zarin. For what he has done. And I am about to deliver him—and her—to you.”
“Why should I believe you?” Col. Zarin looked at the clock on the wall. That, thought Skorzeny, was a measure of just how backward this country was—not only that one would look at a clock on the wall to see what time it was, but that there even were clocks on the wall.
Skorzeny ignored the question. “I propose a trade. One that will enrich us both.”
Col. Zarin’s glance fell upon Mlle. Derrida. “Why do you bring your whore to a meeting of men?” he snarled.
“Because she’s not my whore,” Skorzeny answered levelly. “And I’ll thank you not to talk about her in such a disrespectful manner. You savages are simply going to have to learn that not all the world subscribes to your Dark Ages notion of male and female. Your entire civilization is not worth a Mass, although Paris was.”
“Then why are
you giving us Paris?” laughed Col. Zarin.
“Because Paris is no longer worth a Mass, either. But do not think you have triumphed. It is I, Emanuel Skorzeny, who has triumphed, and you are a mere instrument of my will. I am greater than any God, greater than your Allah, and I shall have my revenge.”
Col. Zarin’s hand stole toward his sidearm. “This is blasphemy. I should kill you for it.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” replied Skorzeny coolly. “Because my death makes you a dead man. It makes your wife a widow and your children orphans. It brings down the full wrath of the West upon your pitiful head. For there will come a time, and soon, when your breast-beating and braggadocio will be as nothing. I am all that is standing in the way of the West’s vengeance upon you. So listen.”
He opened his briefcase, and took out the computer. “This is the very latest example of NSA/CSS technology. It was designed by their top operative, a man with whom I have come into contact, both personally and professionally, on several occasions, each of them unpleasant in the extreme. I am prepared to make you a present of it, in exchange for Miss Harrington, who can be of absolutely no use to you at this point.”
“Do you love her that much?”
“Yes,” said Skorzeny. It was the simplest answer he had ever given to any question in his life.
“And what does love mean?”
For the first time in his life, he felt old, tired, nearing the end. No, it could not be possible. All his life had been devoted to one thing, to one purpose—himself—and suddenly came this realization. That there was something beyond him. Not the ritualistic rote of some alien liturgy, but something more elemental, something more primitive than even religious superstition.
Her.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
Mlle. Derrida could sit silent no longer. She had no use for these Iranians and their imported desert faith. She was a Frenchwoman, the heiress of Voltaire and Descartes, Rousseau, and Rimbaud and Sartre and her namesake, Derrida. She believed in rational thought. Cogito ergo sum. That was her faith, and that was why she had faith in him. “Of course you do,” she said.
Michael Walsh Bundle Page 94
