Shadow Maker (17 page)

N
ick and Drake pushed their way through the flood of suits pouring from the lobby. Periodic explosions still sounded from the sublevel—one every couple of seconds like artificial aftershocks. Smoke and dust billowed up through vents in the floor, and glass rained down from the bridges that crisscrossed the atrium above.

Nick spied an elderly man lying on the gray marble floor, bleeding from a deep gash in his thigh. He sent Drake to help and kept searching for wounded. Deeper in, a young woman in a white blouse and black business skirt stood frozen in fear, her knees pressed together and her hands spread out, trying to maintain her balance on the quaking floor. For a split second, she locked eyes with Nick. Then a final blast, an explosion that dwarfed all the rest, ripped through the floor, heaving granite tiles upward on a wave of concrete that launched the woman into the air. She came crashing down on Nick's side of the fissure and screamed in pain. As the echo of the blast settled, there was a rending and cracking of stone. The gap behind the girl began to widen.

Nick ran toward her and dove flat out onto the broken floor, catching her hand before the cave-in swallowed her whole. Wasting no time, he pulled her up and hoisted her over his shoulder and then sprinted for the exit with the floor collapsing at his heels.

As he emerged from the thick cloud of dust into the haze on the plaza, Nick heard a strange command.

“Set her down, mate. Nice and easy.”

He slowed to a jog and then a walk, still a little disoriented. A dark-haired individual materialized to his right, tracking him with the short barrel of a Glock compact. He wore a suit and overcoat much like Nick's and held up a badge with an eight-pointed star and a crown. The badge made him Metro Police. The Glock made him Special Branch, a superbobby. Regular bobbies carried Tasers.

Nick kept walking. The woman had lost her shoes in the explosion, and he did not want to set her down on the broken glass that littered the square in front of the building.

“I said set her down, mate.”

Convinced by the constable's behavior that Nick meant her harm, the woman started to thrash, kicking her feet and pounding his back with her fists. Nick bore the abuse and the threat from the Glock until he reached clear ground next to the gaudy fake monument. As soon as he set her down, she turned and limped away into the growing crowd.

“You're welcome,” Nick said flatly. Then he turned to survey what was left of the building. The dust cloud still hovered, obscuring the first floor. Every window on the second floor had shattered, along with several more on the floors above. A few more accountants and stockbrokers stumbled out over the piles of glass, beating the dust from their expensive suits and squinting at the sunlight.

“Oi! Mate! Hands where I can see 'em.”

Oh, right. The superbobby
. Nick turned to face his accuser, not certain how rescuing a woman from a disaster area warranted the threat of deadly force. Then he became aware that Drake was right next to him.

“What's his problem?” he muttered to his teammate, raising his hands.

“Your answer is at nine o'clock,” Drake replied, raising his own hands, “coming in hot.”

Nick looked left in time to get slapped in the face by Chaya Maharani. Tears streamed down the lawyer's cheeks. “What have you done?”

“Oi! Doesn't anyone care about the man with the gun?” asked the constable, clipping his badge to his belt.

Nick and Drake glanced at each other and then back at the Brit. “No,” they replied in unison.

“I told you,” said Chaya, turning her anger on the policeman. “They're Interpol. They're chasing the terrorists who kidnapped my father.”

A pair of uniformed bobbies in yellow reflective jackets closed in with their batons drawn and motioned Chaya back. They patted the two Americans down and removed the Beretta Nanos from the holsters under each man's shoulder. One of them found Nick's ID wallet and tossed it to the plainclothesman.

The superbobby flipped it open and frowned at the badge. “Right. Interpol. The thing is, if Interpol was chasing terrorists in London, they would have coordinated with Counter Terrorism Command at Scotland Yard. And if they had coordinated with CTC, then I would know all about it.”

“You're SO15,” said Nick.

“That's right. And if you're Interpol, then Bob here is the Prince of Wales.”

Drake gave a little curtsy to the uniformed constable next to him. “Your Majesty.”

Nick's phone chimed. He looked his captor in the eye. “I'm going to get that.”

The plainclothesman raised his gun in protest, but Nick retrieved his phone anyway. On the screen, he saw another message in the ivory letters of his chess app.
TheEmissary has put you in check.

Even as he lowered the phone, the general murmur of the crowd on the square shifted. Heads turned from the shattered towers to the London Stock Exchange next door. Nick glanced over his shoulder and through the tall windows he could see all the numbers on the giant ticker display turning red. Every stock plummeted. One of the verses CJ had sent him jumped to the front of his mind.
And the marketplace will erupt in turmoil
. “Something bad is about to happen.”

“Something bad indeed,” said the plainclothesman, tucking his Glock into its holster and closing the distance to the Americans. “You two are under arrest.”

One of the bobbies reached for Nick's wrist. He jerked it away.

“Easy, mate.” The bobby reached for him again, slower this time.

Nick's eyes remained fixed on the ticker. The stocks kept falling. Cell phones were ringing all over the square. People were shouting inside the exchange. Suddenly all the numbers disappeared. Red dots flew in from all sides of the ticker and formed a slowly flashing message:
NOW BEAR WITNESS TO THE SECOND SIGN
.

Then the message stopped flashing and faded, replaced by a countdown from ten. Several people in the crowd counted with it. “Nine!”

“Fishman Zeller wasn't the target,” said Nick as the bobby drew his hands together in front of him and locked them in steel cuffs. “It was the London Stock Exchange. And if they have control of the tickers, they must control . . .” His voice faded and his eyes drifted up to the top of the fake Corinthian column. A wisp of smoke rose skyward from the gilded rim. “The server room.”

“Six!” Most of the crowd was now treating the countdown like an early New Year's. The explosions were all but forgotten. Pockets of laughter erupted all over the square.

Idiots.

“Get back!” shouted Nick. He slammed his shoulder into the plainclothesman's chest, lifting the Glock from its holster with his cuffed hands and firing it into the air. Then he leveled the weapon and turned in a circle. “Get away from the column! Get back! Get back!”

The tactic worked. Those nearest to the column stopped counting and backed away. One of the bobbies pulled Chaya into the crowd, trying to protect her from the crazed American.

As he heard the crowd count, “Three!” Nick dropped the gun and rushed the constable, Drake at his side. The two of them lifted the SO15 man by the armpits and dragged him toward the middle of the square.

“Two!”

“One!”

A wild cheer went up, and a fraction of a second later it was silenced by the biggest explosion yet.

Nick and Drake fell to the ground on top of the constable as a cloud of dust and smoke rolled over them. Twisting onto his side, Nick could see the seventy-five-foot column settle back down into the square and tip over. The concrete mask fell away and the huge rusted standpipe beneath it let out an angry groan and slammed into the face of the Exchange.

Nick struggled to his feet and started toward the wreckage, but a heavy hand grabbed him by the shoulder and swung him around. “Where do you think you're going?” asked the man from SO15.

“Uncuff me! People are in there. I can help.”

The constable took Nick by the front of his shirt with one hand and flicked open a telescoping baton with the other, hauling it back. “I don't think so, mate.”

N
ick woke up facedown on a polished concrete floor, staring at the distorted reflection of four cinderblock walls and a cold fluorescent light. His vision was fuzzy and he had a splitting headache, made worse by Scott's voice in his ear, repeatedly insisting that he respond.

“I'm awake,” he mumbled, just to get the engineer to shut up. His coat, shirt, and bulletproof vest were gone, leaving him nothing above the belt but his black Lycra undershirt. His hands, originally bound in front with steel cuffs, had been released and re-secured at his back with flex-cuffs, cinched so tight his fingers were numb. He supposed stealing the constable's gun and threatening civilians with it had something to do with that.

The position of Nick's hands and shoulders made getting up an awkward process. He pulled his knees to his chest and then rolled up onto them. From there, he took his time standing up. Waves of nausea threatened to knock him back down. He found it hard to focus his mind.

“Where am I?”

“Scotland Yard,” the engineer replied, his voice tight, his words quick. “The headquarters building on Victoria Street. I'm glad you're awake. What's the plan?”

The cell was small, maybe six by ten. Nick saw a camera staring down from the corner above the door, but he didn't see an audio receiver of any kind. Someone was watching, but they weren't listening. He staggered over to the opposite corner and leaned his shoulder against the wall, turning his face away from the camera. “Is Nightmare Two up on comms?”

Drake chimed in, as chipper as always. “I've had the rubber ducky song stuck in my head since the column fell. Do you think that's a side effect of a concussion?”

Scott sighed. “Yes. He's up.”

“I'm serious. Why am I remembering songs from Sesame Street? I don't even have kids.”

“How long, Nightmare Four?” asked Nick, ignoring Drake's antics.

“It's been sixty-one minutes since I last heard your voice. The colonel has been pinging me every five to find out if you're dead or alive. You have no idea the kind of stress you're putting me through.”

“My sympathies. What about the virus at Paternoster Square?”

“Only the cyber kind.”

“Are you sure?” argued Drake. “We don't know that the explosions weren't the delivery method. This is how zombie apocalypses get started. You don't know you're infected until it's too late. One minute you're remembering Bert and Ernie. The next you're an undead freak. Maybe that's what's going through every zombie's head. On the outside they're all gore and brain-munching rage but on the inside it's ‘Rubber ducky you're the one—'”

“Do you see what I've had to put up with?” interrupted Scott.

“You're fine, Two. The target is DC, remember? Besides, the bioweapon isn't the second sign. It's the third.” Nick closed his eyes and visualized the translated verses from the catacombs. “The Hashashin listed four signs before the return of the Mahdi. The messenger on the plain of the great empire was the suicide bomber on the DC Mall. The marketplace in turmoil is this cyberattack. It was the third verse that talked about pestilence and disease. That has to be the bioweapon, and that's what's coming next. They're getting progressively worse.”

“There were four signs,” said Drake. “So there's one more after the bio-attack. What's worse than that?”

“Only one thing.” Drake's point worried Nick. They had no leads beyond the third sign. “Four, have CJ go back over the evidence and look for links to the fourth sign, the sky of molten brass and the black smoke.”

“Will do.”

As the fogginess wore off, Nick became aware of a distinctive pain in his left arm. “Sixty-one minutes. That's way too long to be knocked out from a simple blow to the head.”

Drake confirmed his suspicions. “You were drugged. That plainclothes bobby hijacked an EMT on our way to the paddy wagon. He had the kid inject a sedative into your arm, citing some regulation about ‘excited delirium.'”

“I'm going to kill him.”

“We have to get out of here first.”

“Right. Four, where is Romeo Seven on securing our release?”

“About that,” said Scott, dragging out the words. “Getting you out is proving more difficult than we thought.”

Washington, DC

Capitol Hill

N
o one
summoned
Colonel Richard T. Walker. Usually he informed the Joint Chiefs of an impending threat and went straight to the Pentagon. Occasionally the chairman or the White House notified him of a potential situation and scheduled a meeting. But no one had ever summoned Walker. Not until today.

The colonel sat fuming on a leather chair in a dim anteroom paneled with dark oak, waiting to see Senator Cartwright like a Virginia cadet waiting to see the commandant. He sat with his back rigid, refusing to relax because the chair's tightly stuffed cushion made an unfortunate sound every time he shifted his weight. He would not give the senator the satisfaction of making him look awkward.

Walker did not have time for this idiocy. A biological weapon was adrift in the terrorist nethersphere, and the team he sent to find it had been locked up by some two-bit Cockney cop. Now his team's Interpol covers had suddenly evaporated from the system. He should be running down the glitch and securing their release instead of running up to the Hill like an errand boy. The senator's office had not even given him the courtesy of a reason, but he had a pretty good idea.

The first explosions of the London attack had occurred at 0910 hours Eastern Standard Time. Thanks to Dr. Scott Stone's frantic SATCOM report, Walker knew about it within thirty seconds. The network news stations knew almost as quickly.

Molly's team of intelligence techs could barely keep up with the incoming reports as an unprecedented video timeline developed. Smartphones and tablets captured the events from the first quakes within Fishman Zeller to the moment the great column heaved up out of the square and crashed down onto the London Stock Exchange. Sky News released a dramatic tablet video in which the impromptu cameraman was thrown from one of the atrium bridges by the quaking. The tablet captured the young accountant's terrified face as he tumbled four stories to the granite floor, surrounded in the eerie freefall by shards of broken glass. A less-disturbing video showed an unknown hero carrying a woman out of the building through a billowing dust cloud. It was a miracle that his face remained hidden.

The TV hanging in one corner of the anteroom showed a live feed of emergency crews pulling bodies out of the rubble while a talking head babbled on in morbid appreciation of this new terrorist art—blending the physical destruction with the virtual.

The talking head explained that the virus, now called the Second Sign Virus by network consensus, targeted key commodities and banks on the London Stock Exchange. It worked subtly, artificially nudging some prices down and others up until it triggered a wave of automatic trades. That wave triggered another, more serious wave, and then another, and the digital snowball picked up speed.

Millions of transactions took place in the first minute alone, driving bank stocks and gold into the ground and oil through the roof. Then the snowball leaped across the Atlantic and hit New York as well. The Americans shut their markets down, but the damage was done. Within a few minutes, the Second Sign Virus had caused the single greatest destruction of wealth the world had ever seen. The talking head predicted falling markets across the globe for weeks to come, with losses reaching into the trillions. A well-timed ticker floating across the screen noted that three suicides had already been reported.

As the video switched to a leggy brunette asking the expert a question he had already answered, the senator's door opened. A stocky gentleman with thick white hair and a disingenuous smile emerged. “Ah, Colonel Walker,” he said in an overstated Virginia accent, “I'm so glad you made it.”

Walker stood without so much as a squeak from the chair and took the senator's offered hand. “I was not under the impression that I had a choice.”

“Very direct, sir.” The senator motioned Walker into his office. “
Very
direct. I was told to expect that.”

Moving from the dark oak paneling of the anteroom to the sunlit ivory walls and blond furniture of the senator's office gave Walker the impression of emerging from a dank cave into fresh air. He knew this was intentional. He had once played similar games with his own office at the Pentagon. The senator offered him a seat—a twin of the overstuffed chair outside except for the lighter color of the leather. Walker opted to stand.

Cartwright shrugged and sat down on the edge of his desk. “I often find that I am disadvantaged when it comes to first impressions,” he said, opening his hands. “My life is an open book, always on public display. You must feel that you already know all about me.”

“Only what I see on the news,” Walker lied. In truth, Molly's team had started digging into Cartwright's background the minute the politician had started harassing CJ. Their report was worrisome to say the least.

The liberal senator from Virginia had served his state in that capacity since 2002, but he had not made his mark on the national stage until recently, elbowing his way into the limelight of the second campaign by becoming the president's most vocal supporter. Cartwright likely expected to be rewarded with a cabinet position for his loyalty. All he got was a seat on the Intelligence Oversight Committee and an occasional invitation to dine at the White House. The senator was not a major political player. He was a minor player with a lot of ambition, and that kind was often the most dangerous.

“Why am I here?” asked Walker, checking his watch. “With all due respect, sir, I have a lot on my plate and the drive back to my office isn't exactly short.”

“So I noticed. You took quite a while to get here. I was under the impression that you worked at the DIA's Directorate of Analysis. Heading up Section Seven, was it?”

“Romeo Seven.”

“Right. But the DIA offices at Bowling are just a hop, skip, and a jump across the river—just a hop and a skip, really. Surely traffic wasn't that bad at this hour of the day.”

“Romeo Seven is an off-site section. Our offices are in a different location.”

The senator raised a set of bushy eyebrows. “And that would be . . .”

Walker's features remained a flat scowl.

Cartwright lightly punched the air with his fist and grinned. “G-14 classified. I get it.” He stood up and walked behind his desk, backlit by a broad window with the U.S. and Virginia flags on either side. He placed his hand on the high back of his chair. “Colonel, you
do
know that I have a top-secret clearance with multiple caveats, don't you?”

“Yes, sir, and Romeo Seven is not one of them.” The colonel checked his watch again. The more time he wasted here, the longer Baron and Merigold would sit idle in a British jail. “Again, why did you call me here?”

Cartwright nodded. “Very direct.” He picked up a small remote and pointed it at the flat-screen TV that hung over his faux mantel. The muted feed from CNN blinked and became a paused video. Walker recognized the image of Baron with the woman slung over his shoulder. “Do you know this man?” asked Cartwright.

Walker cast a sidelong glance at the senator. Through all the subtle changes in Cartwright's expression, that phony smile never faded from his lips. He could not read the mind behind it. “Hard to say.”

“Too true, what with his face hidden behind that young lady's rump and all. Let's see if I can fix that for you.” Cartwright clicked his remote and the video began to play, the same video Walker's techs had recorded from the news stream. He wasn't worried. The bystander would stop filming before Baron's face came into view.

But the bystander did not stop filming. The video kept playing beyond where it had before. A man in an overcoat held up a badge and pointed a gun. The scene jostled around as the cameraman fiddled with the zoom to get the gunman's face. Then it shifted back to Baron, who had just set the woman down. Merigold was next to him. Both of them raised their hands.

Cartwright paused the video. “This is a
much
better picture. How about now, Colonel? Do you know this man—the blond guy with the angry scowl?”

“Never seen him before.”

“Well, that is disappointing.” Cartwright came around his desk and stood between Walker and the screen. “I suppose you already know that I have a vested interest in these attacks.”

“Why would I know that?”

“Oh, right.” The senator touched the side of his nose. “G-14 classified. Okay, I'll play along.” He walked over to the screen and scrutinized the men in the video, keeping his back to Walker. “One of my staffers was injured in the first attack, you know. He lost an eye.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Me too. Anyway, the injured party swears up and down that a blond man was on the scene right after that suicide bomber blew up on the Mall. That same blond fella refused to help him with his eye and even punched him.” Cartwright tapped the image of Baron. “Isn't it funny that another blond fella, who matches the description of the first blond fella, appears here, smack in the middle of the second attack?”

Walker nodded. “That does seem suspicious.”

Cartwright turned from the TV and shook the remote at Walker. “You're telling me, but it gets even more interesting.”

He pointed the remote over his shoulder and pressed play. On the screen, the constable flipped open Baron's ID wallet. The bystander got a nice shot of the badge before a policeman waved his hands in front of the camera and the screen went black.

“Are you sure you don't recognize that man?” asked Cartwright. “Last chance.”

“Positive.”

The senator nodded. “I know you have a lot of friends, Colonel. It seems that half this town owes you a favor, even though no one knows quite what section Romeo Seven does for the Defense Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Analysis.”

Walker raised one eyebrow. “We analyze stuff. Mostly intelligence.”

“That's clever.” Cartwright carefully set the remote down, squaring it with the side of his desk as he spoke. “I have friends too—like the one at CNN who kept that blond fella's face off the television. You're welcome. Another friend told me that the Brits were pinging State about two American Interpol agents named Nicholas Stafford and Drake Martignetti.” He stepped around the front of the desk, moving closer to Walker. “Turns out Stafford and Martignetti each have a very authentic-looking file. One problem: not a single person at American Interpol has ever heard of them.”

The smirk abruptly vanished and Cartwright glared at Walker, pointing an accusing finger at his chest, millimeters from his pressed green shirt. “Here's what I think, Colonel. I think those are your men, not Interpol's. I think you're running your own covert war out there, and civilians are getting killed in the crossfire.” He backed up and narrowed his eyes. “Your friend at the FBI can only stonewall me for so long. The Intelligence Oversight Committee
will
be conducting an investigation into these attacks, and we
will
be looking into Romeo Seven.”

“Romeo Seven isn't under your committee,” said Walker, matching the senator's scowl with his own. “You don't have the authority.”

Cartwright nodded. “We'll see, Colonel. We'll see.” He sat down on the edge of his desk again and the phony smile returned. “In the meantime I've had Interpol deactivate the Stafford and Martignetti files. I guess those two boys are on their own.”