Extinction Machine (16 page)

I heard sounds behind her. People. “Where are you?”

“The airport. I caught a cab after you took off.”

“You’re leaving?”

Violin laughed. “I told you that I had a job.”

A job. A nice little euphemism for what she did for a living. When she went to work, someone died. No one I’d miss. No one the world would miss. Lately her work was focused on men who used to belong to the Red Order. And a few of the highly dangerous and incredibly creepy Red Knights. They kept trying to hide from Violin and her sisters in the group code-named Arklight. They tried, but Arklight is very good and very determined. Also, Mr. Church let them have some limited access to Mind Reader. It made Violin’s job easier.

“When will you be back?” I asked.

She was a long time answering.

“Violin?”

“Let’s not worry about when,” she said. “I’ll call you when I can, okay?”

I said that it was okay because it had to be okay. This was as close to an arrangement as we had. Probably as close to a real relationship as we would ever have. I tried hard to resent it, though. I tried hard not to let it feel like a convenience.

“Stay safe, Violin,” I told her.

“You, too, Joseph.”

She was not the kind of person to ever say
I love you.

Maybe I wasn’t, either. Not anymore.

The line went dead.

I sighed. Then I called in the info on the guys outside my apartment. Bug’s assistant, Yoda, took the details and said he’d run it. Oh, and, yeah, Yoda was the kid’s name. His parents were
Star Wars
freaks and, much as I love a little pop culture craziness now and then, those bozos ought to be horsewhipped. Kid’s sister was Leia.

That done, I sat back against the cushions and stared at the walls on the inside of the helo and on the inside of my brain. Before I could sink too deeply into glum musings, my cell rang again. Rudy. The last time I saw him he was dressed in black socks and boxer shorts, covered in Silly String, and drunker than anyone I have ever even heard of. No, we didn’t trick him into any naughty intrigue with hookers, but we staged a bunch of faked photos to make him think we did. Those photos were on my cell, but I hadn’t yet found the right moment to send them to him.

“It lives!” I said into the phone.

Rudy gave me a deep, protracted groan that was equal parts shame, anguish, physical pain, and moral outrage. “Believe me when I say this, Cowboy, I will find a way to kill you.”

“Hold on, I’m about to faint from sheer terror. No … no, that was just gas.”

His next comment was in Spanish and it insinuated that my ancestors frequently and enthusiastically fornicated with livestock.

“Where are you?” I asked once his tirade wound down.

“On the toilet,” he said grumpily.

“You’re calling me from the toilet?”

“Over the last few hours I’ve become quite found of this toilet. We’ve shared so much. Now I seem to develop separation anxiety of a very unpleasant kind if I get too far away from it.”

I laughed so loud Ghost woke from a doze and barked at me.

“You are not a very nice man,” said Rudy.

“I don’t call people while I’m taking a deuce, Rude.”

He told me where to go and what to do when I got there. For a cultured man, he had a nasty gutter vocabulary.

“Circe home yet?” I asked.

“Not until Wednesday.”

Rudy and Circe shared a very nice place in the Bolton Hill section of Baltimore. Right now, though, Circe was at the end of a book tour for her latest bestseller,
Saving Hope: The Seven Kings and the Face of Modern Terrorism.
When she’d heard about the bachelor party, Circe extended her trip by a few days. I think she wanted to clearly separate herself from the indefensible antics of men she otherwise respected as professional colleagues. Rightly so. We were very, very bad.

“Wednesday, huh? Well, maybe you’ll be out of the bathroom by then.”

Rudy gave another groan. “Last night was…”

“Fun? A romp with the guys? A last blast for the single man?”

“An inexcusable descent into the worst kind of excess. My liver may never recover.”

“That’s only because you’re getting old. The old Rudy would have matched me Jell-O shot for Jell-O shot.”

“Believe me, this Rudy is very old.” He sighed. “Oh, with everything you inflicted on me, I never got to tell you about what happened when I met Mr. Church yesterday. You may not believe this, Joe, but it was the father-of-the-bride talk.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Sadly, no.”

“What did he say?”

And he told me …

Twenty-four hours ago

“Come in, Dr. Sanchez,” said Mr. Church. “Close the door behind you.”

Rudy Sanchez entered the conference room, closed the door, and looked around. The room was empty except for the two of them. Most of the lights were out except for a single table lamp with a green globe whose glow barely illuminated the cut-glass carafe of water, two elegant glasses, and the plate of cookies. The only other object was Mr. Church’s laptop, and as Rudy sat, Church consulted the screen, tapped a few keys, and closed the computer.

Church poured them each a glass of water and handed one to Rudy.

“I hear that Captain Ledger is throwing you a bachelor party,” said Church without preamble.

“That is my understanding,” said Rudy after only the slightest pause.

Church sipped his water and set his glass aside. Even in this gloom he wore tinted glasses.

There was no sound in the room. No clock ticked on the wall, no faucet dripped, no exterior sounds intruded. Rudy sat and waited.

After almost a full minute, Church selected a vanilla wafer, bit off a piece, munched it quietly, and set the rest of the cookie down atop his closed laptop.

“Doctor,” said Church, “you know that Circe is my only living relative.”

He made it a statement, but Rudy responded, “Yes, of course.”

“You know that I keep the nature of our relationship confidential.”

“Yes.”

Silence.

Then, “There are many people who would give a lot to have a lever they could use against me. If they knew that Circe was my daughter, then they would have that lever.”

“I—” Rudy began, but Church held up a finger. It was a small gesture, the index finger lifted an inch.

“In a different kind of world, Doctor, this would be the point where I, as the father, would have a frank and open discussion with the man who wanted to marry my daughter.”

“I suppose,” agreed Rudy. “Yes.”

“A discussion filled with advice and cautions.”

“Yes.”

Church picked up the cookie, tapped some crumbs off it, and ate it slowly. He had a sip of water. He ate another cookie. He had some more water. Seconds passed with infinite slowness. Then minutes.

Mr. Church ate a third cookie. He did it slowly, taking small bites, chewing thoroughly, washing it down with sips of water. Five minutes passed.

Ten.

In all that time there was no sound in the room except for the faint crunching of the cookies. Rudy did not move. He did not reach for a cookie. He sat and watched Mr. Church, who sat and looked at him. Behind the barrier of tinted lenses, Mr. Church’s eyes were almost invisible and totally unreadable.

After a dozen minutes had burned to cold ashes, Mr. Church stood up.

“I believe we understand each other,” he said.

And quietly walked out of the room.

Leaving Rudy there. Confused, bathed in sweat. More than a little terrified.

“Dios mío,”
he breathed.

Now

I couldn’t stop laughing.

“It’s not funny,” insisted Rudy, but he was laughing, too.

Then we both got calls at almost the same time.

“Mr. Church is calling me,” said Rudy. “You don’t suppose he was listening?”

“No, you paranoid freak. Something’s up. He’ll fill you in. But Bug’s calling me. Catch you later, brother.”

Before Rudy disconnected he asked, “Is everything okay, Joe?”

“Is it ever?”

Chapter Thirty-three

Over the Atlantic, due east of Hilton Head
Sunday, October 20, 7:26 a.m.

“Hey, Tully, we’re getting something,” said Aldo. “An update from Bones. He says that they managed to put a bunch of those pigeon drones on most of the DMS offices. He forwarded this clip from the Warehouse in Baltimore. One of the drones is on the ledge outside of the Deacon’s office window.”

He turned up the volume and replayed a series of audio clips. They were conversations between the Deacon and various individuals. The Ghost Box voice recognition software pinged the other parties as Captain Joe Ledger, Dr. Rudy Sanchez, Secret Service Director Linden Brierly, and computer expert Jerome Taylor. They listened to all the calls.

Most of it was intel they already had, but Aldo replayed one section over again. Jerome Taylor—the geek they called “Bug”—was telling Church and Ledger about a UFO expert living in a lighthouse.

Aldo’s face went pale. He switched the audio files off and turned to Tull. “We are in some deep shit, son.”

Tull grunted. “Why do you say that?”

“Didn’t you listen? Ledger’s going after Junie Flynn.”

“Why is that a problem? She’s a civilian.”

Aldo gaped at him. “Are you serious? She’s way too dangerous to—”

But Tull shook his head. “You’re looking at this the wrong way, Aldo. You always look at these things like piecework. You need to step back and look at all of this as one project, not a bunch of items to be checked off a list. Junie Flynn is dangerous, no doubt, but she’s only as dangerous as M3 wants her to be.”

“Bullshit, Tull. They should have let me clip her when she first started talking about the Black Book.”

“Why?”

“Why?
Why?
Dude, if it wasn’t for her nobody outside of the Project would ever had even heard about the Black Book, that’s why.”

“And that is exactly why the governors gave a no-touch order.”

“That doesn’t make any kind of sense,” groused Aldo.

“Sure it does, but not from close up. You have to step way back and look at it from a distance. M3 see things from a big-picture perspective.”

Aldo eyed him suspiciously. “How do you know about this stuff? Since when are you that far into this that you know the inside track?”

Tull laughed. “I was born into it.”

That shut Aldo up for a few seconds. Then he said, “So what do we do about this? This Ledger character’s on his way to pick her up.”

“Hey,” said Tull, “we’re quarterbacking this thing, remember? You and me. What do
you
think we should do?”

Aldo considered. “Big picture?”

“Yes.”

“I’m leaning toward a scorched earth approach, man. I don’t want to engage these cats hand-to-hand. Not that I’m turning into a pussy in my old age, but I’ve read the reports. I don’t need that kind of grief.”

Tull reached over and patted Aldo’s thigh. “You see, now you’re getting the idea. That, my friend, is a big-picture way of handling things.”

“You agree?”

“Absolutely.”

Chapter Thirty-four

The Oval Office, the White House
Sunday, October 20, 7:29 a.m.

Acting president William Collins closed his eyes and smiled as he listened to the detailed information being shared with him by the attorney general. There was an almost orgasmic flush sweeping through his body in hot waves. Each word, each detail, each amount, brought him closer to an actual physical response, he could feel it in his loins.

When Mark Eppenfeld, the attorney general was finished speaking, Collins had to clear his throat and take a sip of water before he trusted his voice to speak.

“And all of this is verified?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said the AG. “Once I got the tip I had it verified by three separate sources.”

“What are the chances that this is a frame job?” asked Collins. “Could these funds have been placed in Ledger’s account?”

“If the money just appeared there, sir, I would say yes, but I have printouts of Ledger’s banking records going back fourteen months. There is a clear pattern of deposits. As you know deposits of ten thousand dollars or more are reported by banks, so what we’re seeing are multiple deposits in smaller amounts of three to six thousand, but there are a lot of them, and they’re spread out over a number of accounts. Plus there are purchases of IRAs, bonds, and other products that establish that Ledger has been trying to hide some of the money, or keep it off the IRS radar. We got his tax returns for last year and more than ninety percent of this money was never reported. And, sir, that doesn’t even take into account money paid into his brother’s bank account, and the rather large sums that appear to have been sent to numbered accounts. We’re going to have to get subpoenas for that, though the Cayman Island banks will stonewall us.”

“How much, Mark? Give me a ballpark figure.”

Eppenfeld sighed heavily. “It’s bad, Mr. President. Adding in the bank accounts, guesses on the offshore deposits, the certificates, and bonds, we’re talking just shy of four million. But that might be the tip of the iceberg. We have Treasury and FBI at Ledger’s apartment now and they’ve found paper records of cash purchases.”

“What kind of purchases?” asked Collins, feeling that throb deep in his groin.

“Real estate. Five properties, paid for in cash.”

“Jesus. And this is all legit? None of this is planted? I need to know that we’re not being handed a live hand grenade here, Mark.”

“I don’t think so. We’ve run down two of the Realtors so far and they’ve identified Ledger from photos. No … he’s dirty.”

Collins gripped the phone so hard the plastic case creaked. “Why would he be this clumsy about it?”

“He’s not being clumsy,” said the AG. “We didn’t know about this until Funke at the IRS picked out some anomalies in banking records being matched against government employee tax returns. Otherwise, Ledger might have flown under the radar for at least a few more months, and who knows what he would have cooked up by then to hide this. If he was even still in the country. With his knowledge and resources he could go off the radar at the drop of a hat. He still might if we don’t move on him quickly.”