HL 04-The Final Hour (19 page)

It was that quirky mansion that served as Prince’s headquarters.

The plane dropped down slowly toward the earth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Reunion

An odd feeling came to me as I walked into that crazy place again. It wasn’t exactly a feeling of nostalgia and not exactly déjà vu either. But the halls and rooms with their great curtains and enormous fireplaces and marble statues and staring portraits on the walls and shining knickknacks everywhere—it all felt familiar to me and I liked that feeling. I liked remembering. I liked having my life back in my mind again.

Rose led the way, up the front porch and through the doors into the great foyer. Up the broad stairs and down the thickly carpeted hallway. Back to the room that Prince had used for his headquarters.

As I stepped in, I broke into a smile—a tremendously painful smile, I have to say, because my face had stiffened up from all its bruises—but a smile all the same.

There, swiveling around in the high-backed chair where I’d first seen Prince, was Milton One—Waterman’s tech guy. He was a youngish guy with a square head, Asian features. They called him Milton One because he was the inventor and operator of Milton Two, a security device that had come in pretty handy to me once not long before. He and all his friends had disappeared when Waterman was killed and I didn’t know where they’d gotten to. I’d worried they were dead. I was glad to see Milton One alive. I saluted him and he gave me a big wave hello.

Then I recognized the others. There was Dodger Jim, Waterman’s tough muscleman. He was still wearing his Dodgers baseball cap. And there was the crow-faced woman—I never knew her name. She was the one who’d injected me with the antidote that started my memory coming back. They were hovering around Milton One, looking over his shoulder at a small computer he had set up on Prince’s enormous desk.

Despite my growing sense of dread, I was glad to see them. After the evil weeks in Abingdon, it was good to be back among allies.

“How goes it?” Rose asked them.

“Well, I have bad news and really bad news,” said Milton One casually. “Which do you want first?”

“Gimme the bad news,” said Rose. “Let’s build up slowly to the really bad.”

Milton One’s voice remained casual, but I could see by the look in his eyes that he was about to tell us something really gnarly. “Nothing is a hundred percent certain, but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the fact that Prince has secured the device he was after.”

I heard Rose let out a long weary breath.

“Is that the C.O. device?” I asked him.

He nodded wearily.

“What is it?”

It was Milton One who answered me. “C.O. stands for Cylon Orange. It’s a chemical weapon invented in the Soviet Union.”

“When the USSR went down, their small supply of C.O. disappeared,” Rose said. “We always figured someone would try to sell it off to some rogue state or bad actors.”

“And now you think Prince has gotten it?”

“Looks that way.”

“Six canisters’ worth,” said Milton One.

I remembered hearing Prince’s voice from the barracks:

Six canisters . . . It’s more than enough. Six canisters can
be carried by a single man. So nothing will stop it, even if it
comes down to me alone
.

“What’s it do?” I asked.

“The canisters hold the C.O. in an inert liquid form. You put them inside a device about the size of a backpack. When the device is activated, it injects an acid into the canisters that turns the C.O. into a poisonous gas, which is then sprayed out into the air.”

I stood there silent for a moment, trying to get a picture of this in my mind.

Then Rose added: “The whole point about Cylon Orange is its density. Six canisters is enough to wipe out four city blocks.”

Now everyone was silent. I felt my lips go dry. I felt my heart beating so hard I thought the others could surely hear it. “Four city blocks in New York City on New Year’s Eve . . .”

“How many people you figure that is?” Mike asked Rose.

Rose tilted his head, considering. “If it’s in Times Square, where the ball drops? I don’t know. Could be a million people there. A million, at least.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I couldn’t think of what to say. A million people. The Great Death.

“They should shut the city down,” I said finally. “Cancel the celebration. Block off the bridges and tunnels.”

More silence. Everyone nodded slowly.

Milton One said quietly: “That’s the really bad news.”

We waited for him to go on.

Milton One: “I’ve got everything there is now. Every record, every correspondence that wasn’t destroyed beyond recovery. There’s no data left to mine. And in all of it, I came up with not one clue where Prince is headed. Nothing about the exact nature of his plan. His target . . . Nothing.”

I looked from Milton One to Rose to Mike.

“What’s that mean?” I asked them. “What’s that got to do with anything? We know Prince is headed for New York . . .”

“No, we don’t,” said Rose. “We think he is. You think he is. You sort of remember . . .”

“I
do
remember.”

“But you don’t remember anything definitive, Charlie. It’s like I told you. The government has got a dozen threats like this, all the time, especially at holidays. They can’t just shut down every city in the country, send everyone into a panic. Unless we have something more definitive, more certain . . .”

“But . . . ,” I started, but the look on his face—the looks on his face and Mike’s face—made me stop. I knew if there was something to be done, they’d already be doing it.

What happened next was kind of awful. There was this silence. Everyone in the room just sitting there, standing there, without saying a word. If they were anything like me, they were thinking about those million people in Times Square. Prince. The canisters of gas.

Even if I have to do it on my own, the Great Death will
not be stopped
.

Standing in that room, I could almost feel the time passing, the night passing, tomorrow coming, New Year’s Eve.

The silence stretched out and out, moment after moment. It gave me a terrible sense of hopelessness.

And then—this was the awful part—then I realized: Everyone was looking at me. That’s why they were silent. They were waiting. Waiting for me to say something. Something that would help them. Something that would give us a clue, a direction. A chance.

Mike was the one who asked the question out loud: “Is there anything, Charlie? Anything you might have forgotten? Any memory that might be worth digging up, going over again?”

“What do you mean? I’ve told you everything I know . . .”

Now it was Rose’s turn. “Do you think it might be worth . . . going back?”

“Going back?”

“In time. In your memory. To see . . .”

I heard a noise from behind the desk: a sharp intake of breath; a muttered complaint. I turned and looked. It was the crow-faced woman. She had straightened up behind the big chair. She was . . .
scowling
, is the only word I can think of to describe it.

“This is insane,” she said. “Tell him.”

I looked from her to Mike and Rose. “Tell me what?”

Again, Mike and Rose exchanged a glance. Then, as if they’d agreed to it silently, Mike did the talking.

“We’re at a dead end, chucklehead. You’ve heard the danger. If you’re right—and we think you are—we’re looking at a disaster beyond anything we can imagine. In fact, that’s the problem: No one can imagine it. No one’s going to pull the trigger and shut down New York on the basis of our guesswork.”

“When it’s over,” Rose added bitterly, “there’ll be hearings and finger-pointing and political maneuvering and blame. And none of it will make a bit of difference to the dead.”

“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “But what do you want me to do?”

“If,” said Mike, holding the word, emphasizing the word. “If you think there’s something left in your brain, something we haven’t gotten to, something that could help . . . we could give you another dose of the stuff they gave you before.”

“It’s insane,” the crow-faced woman blurted out angrily. “A second dose of this stuff could kill him. It could destroy his brain, put him in a vegetative state for the rest of his life. And it might not even work. We’ve never tried it or tested it on anyone a second time. We haven’t dared. It’s insane.”

She stopped. She turned away.

Mike said, “She’s right, Charlie. It’s powerful stuff. You already know that. I wouldn’t want you to do it for no reason. But if you think there might be something you missed, something worth remembering . . .”

His voice trailed off. I stared at him. I stared at Rose. Then, after a second, I lifted my hand to my face. Pinched the bridge of my nose, squeezing my eyes shut. I was thinking about that moment—that moment in the Jeep with Mike when something—some memory—had teased at the corner of my mind. It had happened in the plane too. There
was
something—something I knew but didn’t know I knew. Something I’d seen but couldn’t quite remember . . .

I felt everyone’s eyes on me as I walked across the colorful rug, past the gilded chairs, to the high window. I looked out beyond the thick draperies. Saw my own bruised and exhausted expression reflected in the dark pane of glass. I looked out through the image of my own hollow eyes into the night beyond.

It might kill him. It might destroy his brain. Put him
into a vegetative state for the rest of his life
.

I drew a deep breath.
A million people
, I thought. More than twice the population of my hometown.

And there was something. Something. What was it? What had I seen or overheard in the compound, in the barracks?

I remembered Prince’s voice:

When we hit them again, so hard, right there, right
where we hit them so hard before .
. .

I remembered crouching beneath the barracks window with the unconscious guard slowly coming around.

The point is this. You can see here. The route is set. We have agents at the entrances and exits to ensure everything
goes smoothly. This is the great and final mission of the
Homelanders .
. .

I felt my body go taut. “Wait,” I said.

I turned around. They were all looking at me. Rose and Mike. Milton One and Dodger Jim—and the crow-faced woman, she was looking at me too now.

“There is something,” I told them. “Only . . .”

“Only?” said Rose.

I looked at him helplessly. “I’m not sure what it is. When I was eavesdropping on the barracks, listening to Prince make his plans, he said to the others—to Waylon and Mr. Sherman—he said, ‘You can see here. The route is set.’”

Rose never showed much emotion, but he showed some now. At least, he licked his lips and took a half step toward me. For him, that was a sign of wild excitement.

“What did he mean, ‘See here’? See where?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “That’s why I got caught. I realized he must have been showing them something. A map or something. So I grabbed hold of the windowsill and chinned my way up so I could peek in.”

“And?” said Rose. “What did you see?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. There was nothing to say. I shook my head.

“Come on, chucklehead,” said Mike. “There had to be something.”

I stared down at the floor. I thought back to the room inside the barracks. “I only saw it for a single second before the guard started to scream for help,” I murmured.

“Think, Charlie,” said Rose. “What did you see?”

“The room. Prince. Waylon. Sherman. The desk.” My head came up, fast. “The laptop! The laptop turned around to face the others. That must’ve been what he was showing them.”

“Did you see it? Did you see the screen?” said Rose.