Betrayal (24 page)

The computer displayed the picture of an antenna with green waves radiating out. Cassi recognized the enlarged icon. A wireless network was in use. The other image on the screen indicated the reason. To the right of the icon were the cascading red digits of a large digital clock, followed by the words “Seconds until BOOM.”

Cassi felt her intestines turn to water as she stared in shock and disbelief at her brother’s devious work. 00:53 ... 00:52 ... 00:51 ...

Chapter 40

Baltimore, Maryland

“T
WENTY
-
FIVE
. T
WENTY
... five.” Odi kept repeating the number to himself, shaking his head as he worked. That was a lot of senators.

Tearing a paper towel off the roll without removing his protective yellow gloves, he dabbed the sweat from his brow. Time was running short. Dawn was approaching, and he needed to be gone by first light. He wished he had not had to come to Johns Hopkins a second time. If it weren’t for the need to super-cool the nitric acid, he could have used Aunt Charlotte’s kitchen instead of the graduate chemistry lab.

He had perfected the Creamer’s formula while preparing for the Potchak hit. He had the chemistry down cold. So aside from the potential of being blown to bits, he found no excitement in the task. Although the final product was magical, the production of Creamer felt mundane as chicken à la king. It boiled down to measuring and mixing, heating and cooling, filtering and separating—for hours on end. Because he had a lot of things to occupy his troubled mind—twenty-five to be exact—neither the tedium nor the physical danger bothered him. Still, he was afraid. He was afraid of getting caught. Although breaking into his old lab was not a serious crime, if caught he would be identified. Then his Iranian alibi would dissolve faster than the sugar he now poured, and he would go to jail for murder.

Odi tried to focus on the bright side as he stirred. The graduate lab had state-of-the-art equipment, so it was faster and easier to make Creamer here. It had temperature-controlled variable-speed mixers, electronically calibrated pipettes, and programmable centrifuges—everything required to get each stage of the twelve-step process just right. Working in a proper lab was safer than a basement too, and that was of no small concern. His perspective had been changed by his government’s betrayal, but he still valued his vision and thumbs.
 

An added bonus of working here was that the university lab stocked many of the ingredients he needed, including distilled water, concentrated nitric acid, and acetone. He had acquired the rest for cash at area drug, hardware, and grocery stores, under the cover of a simple but effective disguise. Those purchases included hexamine, urotropine, methenamine, calcium-magnesium powder, powdered cream, sugar, and the omnipresent artificial flavoring.

He watched with satisfaction as the viscous white mass began to bubble slowly in the thick ten-liter beaker. It looked like a bleached lava lamp and it certainly was volcanic. Come to think of it, Odi thought, so was Ayden’s plan.
 

Ayden had a sympathetic friend who was an aide to a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sheila, he claimed, was certain that she could exchange the Half-n-Half served at a committee meeting for Creamer.

“How soon will she be able to do it?” He had asked Ayden.

“The Senate Armed Services Committee is going to be locked in conference tomorrow evening. It’s a marathon effort to finalize the naval budget before recess. Everyone will be there, and unless something changes they will be alone in the building. It’s perfect.”

Odi thought that it sounded almost too good to be true. Still watching the bubbles, he wondered if there were video cameras in congressional meeting rooms. He had not thought to ask about that although Ayden probably would not know. He doubted that there were. Few people treasured their secrecy more than elected officials. But then, politicians also loved their security. He decided that there would likely be video surveillance, but no sound.

Waiting for stage eleven to ferment, Odi tried to picture the scene that would unfold that evening. Having been on many a stakeout, he found himself taking the security guard’s point of view. The guard who drew duty the first evening of recess would be sitting with his black shoes propped up on a gray metal desk littered with Styrofoam cups containing the cold dregs of bad coffee. There would be a box of donuts somewhere off to the side. He would check it three or four times, although the last cruller would have vanished long ago. Most of the monitors before him would be devoid of life, unless you counted the drone-like cleaners vacuuming rugs and polishing floors. The exception would be the conference room with twenty-five famous faces. That was where the guard would direct the eye not tied to the
Post
crossword puzzle. If he were new he might even find it interesting, watching famous faces doling out billions to their pet constituents in the name of national defense.

About forty-five minutes into the meeting, the guard would see a pale senator pause mid-tirade to rub his stomach. If that was interesting enough to draw both eyes, he might even notice that the bellyacher’s fingertips had turned blue. Then the senator would disappear in the blink of an eye. For the attentive guard it would be a perplexing version of now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t.

The alarm would begin to blare a second later once the blast blew the windows out and in shock he would knock the coffee cups off the desk with his feet. Meanwhile, the senators sitting closest to the deceased would keel over, their bodies impaled by shrapnel made from splintered rib. The non-veterans would scramble up from the floor, their minds failing to comprehend the chaos that engulfed them. Then a second senator would explode in their midst and complete pandemonium would erupt. Slack-jawed but on his feet, the guard would now be struggling to make sense of the muted drama playing out before his eyes.
 

Seconds later the conference-room doors would crash open and other guards would rush in only to be shoved aside by terrified senators running out. As the guards looked blankly at each other, clueless about what to do, the explosions of the white-coffee drinking senators would continue in polished mahogany elevators and on stately marble stairs.

Within hours the world would begin scrutinizing how the SASC carved up the lion’s share of the national budget. Would that change anything? Odi was not sure.

Although taking out The Three Marks had served justice and satisfied the debt of honor Odi owed his fallen friends, it would not create permanent change. Ayden had been right about that. But making the public aware of how they had been duped, and why … that just might make a lasting difference.
 

The big beaker stopped bubbling as Odi pondered that thought, indicating that the penultimate reaction was now complete. For the final stage of the brew he had to slowly mix in a liter of super-cooled nitric acid. Very slowly. This was by far the most dangerous step. This was how many an anarchist had met his maker. He gripped a huge flask with a pair of heavy tongs and prepared to stir its acidic contents into the beaker on the hot plate. Once the two containers were mixed and cooled, he would have just over two gallons of Creamer. Eight liters.

“Why does she need two gallons?” Odi had asked. “I’d think a quart would be more than enough. Surely twenty-five Senators won’t consume that much cream in their coffee?”

“She can’t control which carton of Half-n-Half Senate Food Service will take from the fridge,” Ayden had replied. “So she will have to replace them all.”

“Tell her to find a way. I can’t have six or seven unused cartons lying around. I don’t want any innocents accidentally killed.”

“We’re lucky to have Sheila, Odi. Let’s not push it. I’ll get her to promise to go back to the kitchen and replace the Creamer with the original containers once the conference room is set up. That will have to suffice.”

Odi saw Ayden’s point, but he did not like it. “Can’t she just replace the cream after it’s already set up in the room?”

“I asked her that too. She said it was too risky. Compared to the kitchen, the conference room is much more secure.”

Odi shook his head. “Okay. But she has to promise to pour the remaining Creamer down the drain right there in the kitchen.”

“No problem.”

“And Ayden, I am going to have to insist on delivering the Creamer to Sheila personally, so I can make that point.”

There was a longer than usual pause before Ayden typed, “As you wish.”

As Odi began pouring the large flask of super-cooled nitric acid into the beaker, the pager in his front jeans pocket began to vibrate. Maybe it was the fact that he had been up all night. Maybe it was because his nerves were already at their end. Whatever the cause, the shock of the pager was too much. Odi’s hands trembled from the jolt and the liter of super-cooled nitric acid plummeted from the tongs.

Chapter 41

Baltimore, Maryland

A
YDEN
BOUNCED
UP
and down on the balls of his feet, listening to the symphony of beeps and boops that indicated his international call was going through.

“Royal Falafel.”

“Do you have fresh tabouleh?”

“Just a moment. Who’s asking please?”

“Doctor Jones.”

Ayden stopped bouncing and took a deep breath to calm his nerves. This was really intense.

“Doctor Jones, how nice to hear from you. Where are you calling from?”

“I’m at Johns Hopkins University. I ... I’m not sure I can go through with this.” There, he had said it.

When Arvin’s voice came back on the line half a beat later, it was calm as ever. “Of course you can Ayden. Just look at what you’ve already accomplished. Why, just six months ago you were a desperate doctor burning through his bank account in a noble but doomed attempt to single-handedly bailout an ocean of poverty with a leaky thimble. This evening you had a private meeting with the Director of the FBI to discuss the future of the planet. In the next twenty-four hours you will do more to alleviate world suffering than you could have done in ten lifetimes back in Iran. And that brings up a key point for you to remember, Ayden: you are no longer alone. You have friends now, comrades in arms, support.”

Ayden found Arvin convincing, but he was not yet there. He decided to lay it all on the table, hoping that his sponsor would erase all his doubt. “I’ve gotten to know Odi over this last month. He has become a friend.”

“Friends die in war, Ayden. It’s sad, but true. I have lost many. Unless you can get Odi to back off his demand to meet the woman you invented—Sheila was her name as I recall—you have to go through with it. He would see through an imposter, and his Creamer is crucial to our plans. I’m sorry, but there’s just no other way. I truly wish there were.”

“I just don’t know. I am a doctor, after all. I took an oath.”

“The men whose corruption you are fighting took an oath as well. Because they have forsaken theirs for years, you must set yours aside for a day.”

“I’m not sure that I can.”

“Look, Ayden, I know the burden is heavy. But do not let it slip from your shoulders. By seeking to get out from under it, you will only crush yourself. Think about it. You are one of the few Western doctors who have seen the pitiful, imploring looks epidemic in Third-World children’s eyes. If you turn your back on them now, you will never forgive yourself. Nor will you be able to go back to your old life. If you tried, you would be paralyzed by debilitating guilt. Every time you encountered a child suffering from preventable disease and facing a shortened life of grinding poverty, you would feel responsible. No my friend, your only real option is to move forward.”

As Ayden reflected on the wisdom of Arvin’s words, his sense of purpose returned like a torch reignited. “Will this really make—”

“Of course it will make a difference, Ayden. Of course it will,” Arvin interrupted. “If there is one thing that Americans are good at, it’s standing on a pedestal and making noise. Once you rivet the world’s attention to the congressional budget for defense, there will not be a literate man, woman, or child on Earth unaware of the poverty and suffering the United States could alleviate with the resources it now dedicates to war. Public opinion will force them to beat their swords into plowshares. Unfortunately, this is the only way to usher in a peaceful new world. These are their rules, not ours.”