She had just downed her first spoonful when her phone dinged, signaling an email. It was from Harris.
8 Ellanor C. Lawrence Park off 28. Behind Walney Visitor Center. Small amphitheater. Turn left, take trail heading Southeast toward Cabell’s Mill.
She checked her watch: 7:38 p.m. She’d have to hurry. Abandoning her soup, she grabbed her jacket and Glock 19. As she rode the elevator to the condo’s underground garage, she wondered why Harris had chosen a local park. They’d always met in his government-provided Cadillac or at a safe house. Was he taking extra steps to ensure no one saw them meeting? Another explanation came to her. She had just been drawn into a trap in Baltimore. Could this be one, too? Paranoia or perception? She checked the email on her phone. Compared the most recent to the first that she’d received after notifying Mr. Smith. The two emails matched. Still, just to be certain, she forwarded Harris’s email to Thomas Jefferson Kim at IEC. He was a computer expert. He would know if she had reason to worry.
“It’s from Harris. Safe to meet,” Kim replied.
Mayberry frequently jogged in Ellanor C. Lawrence Park, 650 acres of forested hills south of Reston off State Highway 28. She arrived at the park’s visitor center, an eighteenth-century farmhouse called Walney, so named because of the walnut trees encircling it. Twilight was bleeding into night. She fetched a flashlight from her glove box and smiled at a couple loading a cooler and two toddlers into their car. The park was closing and once that couple departed, Mayberry’s Jaguar would be the only vehicle in the lot. She hurried down the hill from the stone farmhouse to rows of wooden benches facing an outdoor stage. As directed, she turned left on a hardened earth path.
Although it was growing darker, she was reluctant to switch on her flashlight. Doing so would make her easy to spot, and she still was uneasy about meeting Harris in such a remote area.
Ten minutes down the path, she stopped. An emerging half-moon illuminated the trail, but she had entered a section under a thick canopy of trees. It was filled with shadows. She was now walking along the bottom of a ravine, with a creek flowing next to her and rising hills on either side. Something darted across the path, startling her. Two squirrels. The park was overrun with them. She moved cautiously in the darkness, watching each step to avoid stumbling on the uneven terrain. Suddenly something felt squishy under her left running shoe and she smelled a horrible odor. A pet owner had cleaned up after his dog but had discarded the plastic bag on the path, leaving it for her to step on.
The trail that she was following connected the Walney farmhouse to a pond and Cabell’s Mill, another building that had been an operating mill until 1916. Ellanor Lawrence and her husband David, the founder of U.S. News & World Report, had purchased the mill in the 1930s, converting it into a guesthouse. Lots of notables had picnicked in this sanctuary, including Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Historical trivia—Mayberry’s OCD compulsion. Back then, this had been farmland. Today a lone sliver of greenery tucked between endless suburbs.
Because hers had been the only car parked at the Walney visitor center, Mayberry assumed Director Harris had arrived at the park’s more southern Cabell’s Mill entrance. It was closest to a major highway. If so, he’d be walking north toward her on the path.
Mayberry took several more steps and nearly slipped because of a wet spot caused by water splashing from the creek next to her. She caught herself. It would be impossible for her to continue safely without using her flashlight. She put her finger on its switch but stopped before turning it on.
A sound. To her immediate right across the creek. Squirrels? Not this time. A man’s cough. He’d chosen higher ground, looking down into the ravine. An old black pine tree, at least two feet in circumference, was a step ahead. Another black pine had fallen at its base along the creek. She quietly stepped from the path, transferring her unlit flashlight into her left hand while drawing her Glock 19 with her right.
Another muffled cough. The snapping of a dry branch. Whoever was on the hill was moving down toward her. Mayberry dropped on her haunches and pressed her back against the upright pine, positioning herself between it and its fallen twin. She was now hiding behind a wedge created by the two trees.
A flashlight beam. Someone was approaching on the trail from the direction of Cabell’s Mill. At this distance, she couldn’t identify who it might be. The approaching figure crossed a wooden bridge over the creek some thirty yards south from where she was hiding.
A loud splash. Several expletives. The unknown cougher to her right apparently had slipped while coming down the ravine. Fallen into the ankle-deep creek next to the path.
“Valerie?” the man on the footpath called out, after hearing the sound of thrashing and cursing. The voice was not Director Harris’s. It was Thomas Jefferson Kim.
Phew, phew, phew, phew. The four sounds mimicked those of a storm door slapping shut, but Mayberry recognized them as gunshots. Most likely .22-caliber rounds fired from a pistol with a suppressor. They had been shot by the unknown man on her right.
She heard Kim holler. He dropped his flashlight.
Phew. Phew.
Mayberry rose from her hiding spot behind the trees, flipping on her flashlight and aiming her Glock 19 in one coordinated move. The flashlight beam exposed the gunman’s face. Standing only a few yards from her. She recognized him. He was an Antifa member. From inside the van in Baltimore when she had been abducted. One of the men who’d been ordered by Makayla to wait outside the warehouse.
She and Kim had walked into an ambush.
Mayberry fired two rounds. Her Glock 19’s bark was deafening compared to the Walther P22 pistol in the ambusher’s hand. He was dead by the time his head hit the creek water.
A slug whizzed by Mayberry and smacked into the tall black pine next to her. She doused her flashlight and ducked behind the fallen tree into her hiding spot. Someone else was in the woods—a second shooter.
Blam, blam, blam, blam. The shots being fired at her were not suppressed and appeared to be coming from a heavier-caliber pistol. Fired on her left, but she couldn’t be certain of the shooter’s exact location.
Mayberry lay down flat on the damp ground as the slugs continued to hit the trees protecting her. Raising her Glock above the barrier, she fired wildly. Five rounds squeezed off as quickly as she could pull the Glock’s trigger. She stopped, listened. Nothing. Raising her handgun again, she emptied its clip into the blackness. Reloaded.
“Mayberry!” Kim yelled from the trail.
His cry was greeted by a fresh round of gunshots from the unknown attacker—this time aimed at Kim.
Mayberry knew why Kim had called out. He was drawing fire, pulling attention away from her. She peeked over the log, and this time, when the shooter fired at Kim, Mayberry saw the muzzle flashes.
Mayberry rose up and fired four shots from her Glock 19 in two-round bursts.
Ducking down, she waited. Nothing. Rising to her knees, she switched on her flashlight, aiming it to her left up the ravine. She caught a fleeing Antifa shooter in the light.
Makayla Jones was disappearing over the rise.
Mayberry fired, but Makayla was gone.
She hurried back onto the path and ran to where Kim was lying on his back. Her flashlight showed him clutching his bloody right bicep. His jacket had three noticeable holes.
“Both of those bastards shot me,” he said, gulping for air.
“Tell me you’re wearing a vest!”
He nodded affirmatively. “I was suspicious after I got an email from Harris telling me to come to a park. . . .”
“Wait, I sent you emails that Harris had written me,” she replied. “I asked if they were legitimate and you emailed back that they were. It was safe for me to come here.”
“How many emails did you get from Harris?” Kim asked.
“I got one immediately after I had called asking for a meeting. I got a second one much later telling me to come to the park. I forwarded both to you.”
“I nev
er received them,” Kim said. He thought for a moment. “My guess is the first email was legitimate. It came from Harris. But the Magician—the mole—sent the second one to you and also one to me pretending he was Harris.”
“Helping Makayla ambush us.”
“Right, the Magician has tapped into all of our email accounts. Mine, yours, and Harris’s. He’s manipulating us.”
“Who is he?”
“I’m still not sure, but I’m going to catch him.”
She helped Kim stand. He was wobbly but regained his breath.
“Let me see your wound.”
She helped him remove his shirt, the bullet-resistant vest, and the T-shirt under it. Three rounds were smashed into the vest’s fabric, leaving him bruised and with a possible broken rib, but none of the higher-caliber slugs had penetrated it. Another round, much smaller and most likely from a .22-caliber pistol, was embedded in his upper arm.
“It hurts like hell,” Kim said.
“I’m contacting Harris,” she replied, “by phone, not email!”
She dialed “Mr. Smith” on her backup cell. Within minutes Harris called her. Their conversation was brief, one-sided. If the Magician was intercepting emails, he might also be monitoring their calls.
When finished, Mayberry briefed Kim. “Harris is sending people here to clean up this mess. I’ve been told to take you to a local emergency care. He and his people will meet us there. I’ll drive.”
“Really—you’ll drive,” Kim replied sarcastically, still clutching the bullet wound in his arm.
They found their way to the Cabell’s Mill lot where Kim’s Mercedes was parked, reaching it about the same time a van arrived. Four men stepped from it.
“Where’s the package?” one asked.
“Follow the path heading north. You’ll reach a footbridge, he’ll be on the left of the trail, facedown in the creek,” she replied.
Mayberry got behind the wheel.
“Where’d he tell us to go?” Kim asked.
“A strip mall. Only a couple miles away.”
He cursed. “I fell for this ambush because I was so eager to meet with you and Harris. I let down my guard. I wanted to tell you that I’ve identified Makayla. It wasn’t easy—in fact—it was damn hard, but I did it.”
“Who is she?”
“Nataniela Kalanga. She is not and never has been an American citizen. She’s an illegal.”
“Kalanga, what sort of name is that?”
“Her parents are from Angola. Back when the superpowers cared about Africa, the Soviets made a move there. The CIA went in to stop them, which led to a bloody civil war. Makayla’s grandfathers worked for the KGB. When the Soviets pulled out, the KGB resettled their families in Moscow, but neither liked it. Both families moved to Belarus. One son married the other family’s daughter, and the result was Nataniela Kalanga.”
Kim paused for a moment. He had worked diligently to identify Makayla Jones, aka Nataniela Kalanga, and he wasn’t going to hurry his account.
“We went through thousands of records—passports, facial recognition images at airports—the agency, bureau, Interpol, people in Ukraine and France. It was tedious, difficult work,” he recalled. “The agency and I had trouble getting a positive identification because she changed her name when she initially crossed from Belarus into France. She was posing there as Adalene Petit. That’s also the name she used when she entered the United States on a student visa. She attended undergrad at Stanford before returning to France. By the time she met Gabriel de Depardieu and Aysan Rivera at the Ecole Normale Supérieure school in Paris, she’d changed her identity a third time. She had become Makayla Jones with a complete set of U.S. credentials.”
Kim paused to catch his breath and added, “Getting shot really sucks.”
Mayberry drove them into the strip mall where the emergent care was located.
“How’d she’d manage to obtain a U.S. passport?” Mayberry asked.
“While she was a student here, she obtained a copy of the real Makayla Jones’s birth certificate and used it to get a Missouri driver’s license with a St. Louis address.”
“Missouri? St. Louis? Is that where the actual Makayla Jones lives?”
“It’s where she’s buried. Her parents in St. Louis told us they’d lost a baby girl from SIDS at nine months. They named her Makayla Jones. They had no idea Nataniela Kalanga, aka Adalene Petit, had assumed their dead child’s identity. Because the real Makayla Jones was an infant, there was no Social Security number—until the fake Makayla obtained one. With a Social Security number, driver’s license, and birth certificate, she got a U.S. passport.”
Mayberry parked the SUV outside the emergent care, and a couple stepped from a nearby Ford Taurus.
“We’ll handle it from here,” the woman said. She led Kim into an urgent care that was tucked between a Baskin-Robbins and Zips dry cleaners.
Director Harris had told Mayberry to stay outside and wait. Ten minutes later, he arrived. Unlike the others, who had come from nearby buildings in Reston, he’d had farther to drive. She joined him in the backseat of his Cadillac.
Before either of them had a chance to speak, Director Harris’s phone dinged. He’d received an unsolicited email from a Russian server. He opened it. A thirty-second video. Russian foreign minister Yakov Prokofyevich Pavel, naked, locked in a glass-fronted chamber. Him raising his hands in obscene gestures. A barely noticeable puff of red about his head. He glanced up. Collapsed. Dead.
The director’s phone dinged a second time. Another emailed video. Brett Garrett handcuffed. Peter standing next to him, crying.
A two-word message: “I win.”
Thirty-Five
Peter had stopped sobbing by the time he and Garrett were once again locked inside the Kamera’s converted mailroom. Garrett’s hands remained shackled in front of him. Twelve hours before he was fated to die. How many others had served as Russian lab rats?
“Peter,” he said, “I think I see a ballpoint pen in one of those mailbox cubbyholes, can you get it? It’s on the top row and I can’t reach it.”
Peter followed his eyes but didn’t immediately see it.
“About fifth from left,” Garrett said.
The teen removed a blue plastic ballpoint pen from the slot.
“Some of these older ink pens could be opened. See if there’s a brass ink cartridge inside.”
Peter unscrewed the pen and withdrew a round cartridge.
“Fantastic,” Garrett said. “Now you need to begin bending that cartridge back and forth until it breaks in half.”
The youth quickly snapped it into two pieces.
Garrett turned his palms upward so the teen could see the restraint’s keyhole. Like most handcuffs, these were opened with a hollow key that turned around a permanent center stem.
“I need you to jam that cartridge into the keyhole onto its stem. The pen’s circumference is slightly smaller, so it’s going to split at its tip. If you do it right, we can pry that split open, turning the cartridge into a key.”
Peter shoved the cartridge onto the stem. With his fingernail, he separated part of its split end, bending it outward. It took him several attempts, but he was able to open the lock.
“Great job!” Garrett said, freeing his hands. “Using a ballpoint pen is an old trick used by prisoners. Now we have to get that door open. Can you get your hand through its mail slot?”
Peter lifted the narrow cover, which opened inward. Peeking through it, he could see the electronic keypad. It was mounted to his right on the hallway’s back wall. He forced his hand and wrist through the mail slot, but he couldn’t reach the pad. It was simply too far away.
Garrett searched the room for some sort of extension. The plastic pail that had been tossed inside to serve as a toilet had a metal handle. He broke it free and straightened it. He guessed it was about twenty-six inches long.
“Try this,” he said, handing it to Peter.
Peter slipped his hand thro
ugh the slot and maneuvered the wire. It reached the telephone-like buttons.
“Can you push them?” Garrett asked.
He jabbed the wire against the pad. It struck a digit and they heard a beep.
“You’re doing great,” Garrett said. “I saw at least three numbers when the guards were unlocking it. It’s a start but we’re going to need all six. Did you see any of them?”
Peter shook his head no.
It seemed hopeless. Peter pulled the wire back inside, and both of them sat on the floor, thinking. There had to be a solution. They had to escape.
Garrett’s mind flashed back to when he’d heard Peter playing Tchaikovsky for his grandfather on the piano at the dacha outside Moscow. Peter could play any tune once he heard it, Pavel had claimed.
“You heard the sounds when the guard pushed the keys, didn’t you?” he asked.
The boy’s face lit up. He grabbed the straightened wire and crammed his hand through the mail slot, reaching the keypad with its tip. He touched each digit to hear its unique sound.
“Can you replicate it?” Garrett asked.
Peter hit the first digit. Then he stopped and pulled back the wire. He looked at Garrett. He was scared.
“You can do this,” Garrett said. “Your grandfather called you a child prodigy. Remember the sounds the pad made.”
Peter stuck the wire through the slot. Six distinct tones. He began to tap on the keypad, and when he finished, Garrett heard the electronic bolt sliding open.
“You did it! Your grandfather would be proud!”
A beaming Peter took the wire and immediately looked for a place to hide it.
“No point in that,” Garrett said. “If they catch us, they aren’t going to bring us back here.”
Garrett opened the door. It was now after midnight. The lab workers had gone for the day. The dimly lighted hallway was empty. Garrett led. When they reached the end of the hallway, he stopped.
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