Pandora's Temple (27 page)

“Going clockwise, boys, that’s her at Hastings, the pier where the Royal Dutch Shell supertanker was docked, and Valley Coal headquarters.”

“So WorldSafe’s taking environmental terrorism to a whole new level,” picked up McCracken, “with her as their chief operative.”

“And she was going to make the
Deepwater Venture
her fourth target,” added Folsom, “before something else intervened.”

“You mean fifth,” said McCracken.

“What?”

“Fifth. Check out the screen. Looks like Captain Seven has earned himself a promotion to Eight.”

The captain wheeled his chair back in front of the monitor, working the mouse so the final, unidentified shot of Katie DeMarco filled the screen. “Software uncovered this, MacNuts, not me. This is the oldest of the four, which probably makes it her first job. Almost seven years ago at a fossil fuel plant outside Stuttgart, Germany. This chick really knows how to make things go bang.”

“And we let her get away,” Folsom bemoaned, shaking his head. “
I
let her get away.”

McCracken laid a calm hand on Folsom’s shoulder. “Time for me to return the favor, Hank.”

“Favor?”

“You brought me back into the game, and now I’m going to make sure you stay in it.” McCracken waited for Folsom to turn from the computer screen toward him before continuing. “I think I know what Katie DeMarco’s next target is.”

Two nights after surviving the attack at Homeland Security headquarters in New Orleans, Katie DeMarco found herself crouched on the roof of a building neighboring the corporate headquarters of Ocean Bore Technologies. Located at the northwest corner of Interstate 45 and Beltway 8 in the Greenspoint area of Houston, Ocean Bore occupied an eight-story, 108,000-square-foot steel and glass building. Security was relatively heavy, but nothing she wasn’t expecting. And her plan did not even involve entering the building.

Her research and previous recon of the site indicated that Ocean Bore used Overnight Express as a delivery service, a leaner version of FedEx, chosen in large part for the twenty-four pickup and delivery services the company offered. Ocean Bore maintained interests all over the world, so deliveries came in at all times and shipments went out that way too.

Overnight Express maintained a fleet of navy-blue trucks, one less in number as of this afternoon, the same one she’d parked ten minutes ago in the circular drive just out of sight from the security desk before positioning herself on the roof. If anyone grew suspicious of the truck, an inspection of the rear would reveal only properly wrapped, addressed, and invoiced packages of various sizes and shapes; WorldSafe was nothing if not thorough, and forming a storehouse of intelligence on the group’s potential targets had been one of the group’s hallmarks.

In this case, all the packages stored in the rear of the Overnight Express truck parked before the building entrance contained a hybrid mixture of layers of cotton soaked in diesel fuel, ammonium nitrate, and mechanical-grade ball bearings. Katie watched from the rooftop and pictured the effects of the blast force turning the building’s multitude of glass panes into deadly projectiles propelled in all directions at virtually immeasurable energy and speed. The initial blast and accompanying shock wave would be enough to lay waste to the building’s front section, turning it into a jagged, charred shell. Had this been daytime, hundreds of people would die. At night it would be considerably fewer, but her point would nonetheless be made.

How do you feel about that?

Her one visit to a psychiatrist had featured that question being posed to her at least a dozen times and now Katie posed it to herself.

Something, I feel something . . .

And Katie would rather feel guilt, remorse,
anything
, because it was better than feeling nothing; and nothing was all she had felt for a very long time. She did not enjoy killing and had never observed any of her victims close up, with the exception of the fire in Stuttgart that was never supposed to happen. But acting on her aggression, fighting to relieve the demons that had haunted her for so long, was the only thing that made her feel anything at all. She knew it was wrong, but her entire life had been based on wrong, casting both her judgment and viewpoint through a jaundiced eye. Initially, she’d hoped the process would end with Stuttgart; instead, it had only begun there and showed no signs of abating now. Like a drug. She needed her fix. Like an addict.

This was supposed to have been her sixth attack coming in the wake of her intended bombing of the
Deepwater Venture
. But fate had intervened in the strangest and most ironic of ways; her identity being thrown into question had ended up saving her life still days away from using explosives to disable the rig’s entire drilling mechanism.

Before he was murdered, Twist had formulated the explosives and packed them appropriately into the packages now in the truck’s rear. All Katie had to do was steal an Overnight Express vehicle from the poorly guarded depot, drive it to the storage unit containing the boxes, and then park it with the product of Twist’s labor. Beyond that there was only a number to dial on her cell phone to reach an identical phone serving as detonator in the truck’s rear.

Ring, ring, ring, ring . . .

All it would take.

“We go on my signal,” Shinzo Asahara said into the small wrist-mounted microphone.

His Aum Shinrikyo troops, composed of his most devoted followers with military or police backgrounds, were stationed at critical points of access to the Nagasaki Yangjiang High Tech Center. The building was the showpiece of the Shenzhen Techno Center, an industrial park in Guangdong, China, that housed small and medium-sized Japanese enterprises specializing in joint research between the two nations involving industry, academia, and government. As far as Shinzo knew, though, only Japanese were employed inside the Nagasaki Yangjiang building.

Asahara was under no illusions that Leander Levy’s study of the symbols akin to those supposedly etched upon Pandora’s jar would yield the jar’s true location. So he had opted for an all-out breach of this building, the most daring operation Aum Shinrikyo had ever attempted. He felt his left hand begin to tingle with numbness and a strange sensation that felt like it was being pricked by icicles. The deformity had happened here in this very building in what felt like another life, just days after Japan’s Supreme Court upheld the order for his father’s execution in September of 2006. Shinzo had believed then that if the rumors were true of the Nagasaki Center’s research into particle acceleration and dark matter, the potential to find the very means he had long sought would at last be in the hands of Aum Shinrikyo. That would have served as his father’s final legacy with the group, one that would have lent meaning to his pending execution.

So Shinzo had assaulted the building with his most trusted followers that night too, raiding the main laboratory to see his life changed radically forever as a result. His hand might have been the most dramatic but was far from the only wound he’d suffered. His vision was cloudy at times, sensitive to light, and often switched from color to black and white like a broken television. He suffered from pounding headaches distinctly different from migraines in that they seemed to radiate outward from the center of his skull. And on top of all that, there were the visions of his father captured in fleeting glimpses in window glass or longer ones in mirrors that had now grown into full-fledged conversations.

Was his father really appearing to him? Had his first fateful experience with the Nagasaki Center’s particle accelerator opened a door between dimensions, between worlds?

Shinzo did not know and chose not to consider the ramifications of what such a truth might mean to human existence: proof of an afterlife, of the ability to coexist with departed souls who in death, apparently, differed little from life.

The possibilities were staggering, and Shinzo found himself wondering if all this was the true plan, if his fate was to use dark matter to destroy the material world so it could join with the spirit world now inhabited by his father. The mere thought, the very possibility, set Shinzo trembling as he again lifted the wrist-mounted microphone toward his lips.

“Take the building. Kill anyone who gets in your way.”

Katie DeMarco had entered the triggering phone number but had yet to hit Call. She was conjuring up the memories, until they crystallized enough in clarity to make her head pound.

The ghosts of her past reared themselves up again, refusing to be forgotten or ignored.

Haven’t I done enough? Haven’t I suffered enough?

Who was she challenging in her mind? Moments like this gave form to her pain, her anguish, how all the violence and destruction had begun. From that first day in Stuttgart, with the attack on the fossil fuel plant, they had been the only things that made her feel alive, vital. Katie recalled a visit she’d made to a psychiatrist a few years before Stuttgart, hoping to find the relief that had eluded her everywhere else. The psychiatrist was a woman, kind and compassionate enough, who had at least tried to understand.

“I want you to close your eyes for me.”

Katie, who was still going by her real name back then, did.

“You’re on a beach. What’s the first thing you think of?”

“I’m in the water, caught in a riptide. I’m fighting it, even though I know you’re supposed to go with it, parallel to shore. I’m getting weaker.”

“What time of day is it?”

“It’s night.”

“Look around. Is there anyone to help you on the beach, hear your screams if you cry out?”

“I’m alone. I’m looking for someone. I think there was someone else with me, someone the riptide’s already taken.”

“But you don’t know who.”

“No.”

“Can you guess?”

Katie remembered feeling as if she were in a trance, almost hypnotized. It was like a dream unfolding before her conscious mind.

“I don’t want to,” she told the psychiatrist.

“Why?”

“Because I’m afraid he might be dead.”

“He?”

Katie remained silent.

“Tell me more about him,” the psychiatrist persisted.

“I want him to be dead.”

“I thought you were afraid for him, worried.”

“This is someone else.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

“Is he the one in the water with you?”

“No, but he’s the one I wish was drowning.”

In that moment, the trance broke and the memories returned, bringing the pain with them. Katie opened her eyes to find the psychiatrist staring right at her.

“Tell me your happiest memory.”

“There are so many . . .”

“Tell me one that involves your mother.”

“Why?”

“Because she wasn’t in the water with you.”

“Shopping in Paris when I was a little girl. Just the two of us. A beautiful day on the Champs-Elysées.”

“Where was your father?”

“Business. Like always.”

“You’re leaving someone out.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because I think it was the other person caught in the riptide with you.”

“My . . . brother.”

“Was he the one in the water?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where was he the day you went shopping with your mother in Paris, on the Champs-Elysées?”

“At prep school.”

“You missed him.”

“Yes, but glad he was away. I hated when he was home, when the family was together.”

The psychiatrist leaned forward, aware they were coming to a crucial moment. “Can you tell me why?”

“No.”

“Do you know why?”

Katie opened her eyes and nodded, her throat suddenly feeling clogged.

“Close your eyes. Picture yourself in the water again.”

Katie closed her eyes, feeling her lungs tighten in anticipation of the riptide.

“Where is your brother?”

“I . . . can’t see him.”

“But he’s there.”

“He went under. The tide’s got him.”

“Someone’s holding him under, aren’t they?”

Katie gnashed her teeth.

“Someone’s drowning him.”

“I want to help . . .”

“But you can’t.”

“I want to dive under the waves. I want to save him.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’m not strong enough. I’m too scared. I’m too weak.”

“Who’s holding him under the water?”

“I’m too scared!”

“Are they coming for you next?”

“I’m too weak.”

“Katie—”

“No!”

“Open your eyes, Katie, open your eyes.”

She’d opened her eyes, left the psychiatrist’s office without another word, and never returned. How much she wanted to save her brother, how much she wanted to be strong enough . . .

Katie hadn’t told the psychiatrist about the sounds she heard while he was drowning. Not cries for help, not desperate screams. Just murmurs, sobs, and muffled pleas. How could she hear them if he was trapped underwater?

But she heard them again now, finally hitting Call and counting the rings. One . . . two . . . three . . .

Katie tensed in anticipation of the fourth, the brief lag between the third ring and the one that would set off the explosives and ravage the Ocean Bore building proving interminable. Then it finally sounded and she tensed; even her breathing halted, flinching in anticipation of the Overnight Express truck exploding violently.

Until the fifth ring sounded, then the sixth, seventh, and eighth that were followed by the clatter of footsteps behind her on the rooftop.

The Nagasaki Center’s security was no match for the forces of Aum Shinrikyo. Men fully prepared to die, who accepted if not embraced death, had been the hardest to kill from the time of the samurai. They wanted to see the end of the world, yes, but more importantly they wanted to help bring it about, and that was what tonight was all about.

Shinzo Asahara’s second right hand began to tingle when he moved for the building, once his men had taken it. Strangely, the building bore little resemblance to the one he recalled from six years ago, looking as if it had been totally remodeled. Engulfed by his soldiers, Shinzo entered the elevator and descended toward the center’s laboratory level a dozen levels belowground. His heart was thudding, breathing starting to pick up. A layer of cool sweat brought a sheen to his face, and he suddenly found it difficult to swallow. This was where he had been remade; this was where the rest of his life’s course was determined for him. He thought he might pass out when the elevator doors finally opened and he emerged from the compartment onto the laboratory level.