The Columbus Code (35 page)

With that, Maria yanked the earbuds from her ears and threw them aside. She stared down at the shards of the cup and thought of what she'd just heard. Tejada was after her father. Her father. Winters. Agent Winters. Her father was with a woman. The Conte woman—whoever she was.

Her father and this woman had an ancient document that Molina would kill for. Something about Columbus.

Tejada was going to deal with Maria himself, but somehow that seemed less urgent than the need to alert her father—who had apparently managed to survive one attack already. She had to tell him before Tejada knew that she knew.

Maria reached for her phone to call him when she realized—Tejada and Molina had been talking in Spanish for hours. They only switched to English when they began talking about her father. And that was after she heard the loud static.

“They knew,” she gasped.

Tejada and Molina had carried on that conversation in English because Tejada knew she would be listening. One of them had found the bug.

Heart slamming in her chest, Maria went for her phone again. Her fingers were already sweating as she tapped Donleavy's number.
The call went to voice mail after two rings and Maria didn't leave a message.

As she flipped through the contacts list for her dad's number, she heard a sound at the door. Then the handle wiggled ever so slightly. Someone was unlocking it. She had no doubt it was Molina. Maria stuffed the phone inside her bra and leapt across the room to the door. The dead bolt was set but she had not put the security bar against the door. She slid it into place and looked around frantically as if a plan would present itself from some corner of the room. She needed to get out of the apartment or she didn't stand a chance. No plan stepped forward, so she went with what came into her head.

Maria pulled an umbrella out of the stand by the door and hurled it toward the French door that opened to the balcony. She heard it smack against the glass as she slipped into the closet a few steps from the front door. Forcing herself not to breathe, Maria flattened against the back wall and pulled the door almost closed. Through the crack she watched the business end of a pistol enter the room first.

Molina stepped forward and, just as she'd hoped, headed straight toward the balcony exit. Still not breathing, Maria slid from the closet and scooted out the front door he had left open. No doubt, he already knew what she'd done and he meant to kill her.

She reached the elevator and banged on the call button. Miraculously the doors opened. Maria reached inside, punched
Uno
on the control panel, and threw herself toward the stairs. She heard the elevator close again just as she yanked open the door to the stairway and hurried down the metal steps. It would be only seconds before Molina realized what had happened and started after her. The only thing she had going for her was speed—and a head start.

Just as she reached the second-floor landing Maria heard the trouncing of footfalls above. She pulled open the heavy door and let
it bang against the wall. While it slowly closed Maria crept down the final flight and waited by the ground-floor exit. She once more willed herself not to breathe and stood as still as possible.
Please, please, please
, she said in her mind.
Go through that door. Please, please, please
.

The footsteps pounded overhead and Maria squeezed her eyes closed, her mind spinning. Then she heard the door bang open on the second floor and, without waiting to see if he was playing her, Maria bolted from the shadows and into the blazing sunlight near the back of the building. She knew this spot well. Although the maid had insisted more than once that she would take out the trash, Maria had always come to the Dumpster herself, just to feel as though she had some kind of control—even if it was just over her garbage. Now she squeezed between it and the alley wall and waited until she saw Molina crawl past in that hearse of a car that was supposed to take her to Tejada.

When it appeared that Molina wasn't coming back, she took the alley at a dead run. Away from all things Catalonia.

An error message said, “The voice mailbox is full.” Winters cut her off with a jab of his finger.

“Still no answer?” Sophia asked from the kitchen, where she was brewing after-dinner coffee.

Winters shook his head. “I can't even leave a message now. Mailbox is full. Not that my brother has paid any attention to the four I already left him.” He dropped the cell phone into his shirt pocket as he moved toward the kitchen. “I finally have service and it does me no good.” He took Sophia's hand and brought it to his cheek. “Look, Sophia, I have to—”

“I know,” she said.

“Of course you do. You always do. But how about letting me say it?”

Sophia closed her eyes and rested her forehead against his chest just as his phone rang. Perfect timing. Maybe he'd been better off without cell service.

“It's probably Donleavy,” he said. “I can put him off for a minute.”

But Sophia motioned for him to answer it and Winters took the phone from his pocket.

“Hey,” Winters said, without checking the number.

“Dad?” Maria gasped. “Is it you?”

“Maria?” He had never known his daughter to be hysterical, but her voice was teetering on the edge.

“It's me,” she said. “Dad, I'm in trouble—and so are you.”

He could actually understand her now and his anxiety level was at an all-time high.

“Are you safe?” he said.

“For the moment, but they won't stop until they find me—and you.”

“Who are ‘they'?”

“Tejada's people. Emilio Tejada. I don't think he'll let them kill me—yet—but they'll do anything to get that journal or whatever it is you have.”

Winters pushed the name “Tejada” aside to come back to later. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Put her on speakerphone,” Sophia whispered. Winters pressed the button.

“Who's with you?” Maria's voice ratcheted up a notch.

“Sophia Conte,” she said.

“He's after you too. Carlos Molina. He works for Emilio Tejada. He's looking for both of you. You have to get to a safe place.”

“We're
in
a safe place,” Winters said, fighting to keep his emotions under control. “You need to be here with us. Tell us where you are.”

“Daddy, I'm scared.”

Winters felt a lump in his throat. “I know, honey. Just give me your location and I'll come for you.”

“No! It's too dangerous.”

Sophia put her mouth close to the phone and spoke in the voice that had more than once talked Winters back from the edge. “He will not come himself, Maria. I will send a car for you. The driver will know the password—
refugio seguro.”

“There
is
no ‘safe haven' from these people.”

Winters grabbed the phone from Sophia. “Maria Anne—you tell me where you are and you tell me now,” he demanded.

It took him a moment to realize that the gurgling sound on the phone was Maria's. “Oh, Daddy,” she said. “You haven't called me that since I was . . . ten.”

“Where are you?” he insisted.

“I hitchhiked as far as Cartagena.”

“You are only four hours from us, Maria,” Sophia said. “Are you in a protected area?”

“I'm down on Los Nietos Beach. I can just keep walking.”

Winters tried not to dwell on the fact that she was wandering on an isolated beach alone at eight o'clock at night. “Okay,” he said. “Stay in that vicinity as long as you can. When the driver gets to Cartagena he'll call and tell you where to meet him.”

“What about you?” she said. “Dad, you don't know what these people are capable of.”

“Oh, yeah, I do,” Winters said. “But handling the bad guys is what I do. You remember that?”

“I remember that,” she said.

“How much juice do you have left on your phone?”

“Fifty percent.”

“Turn it off for the next three-and-a-half hours. That way we know the driver can get through to you.”

Sophia spoke up. “If you don't hear from him by midnight, go to the lighthouse and wait there.”

“I'll see you in about eight hours,” Winters said. “Don't be late or you're grounded,” he teased.

“Oh, please, yes,” she replied. “Somebody ground me.”

When Maria hung up, Winters turned to the window that looked down over the now-darkened village. “She hitchhiked four hundred miles.”

“Yes, she did,” Sophia said. She slid her arm around his waist. “She is your child, after all.”

Tejada stared through the one-way glass that gave him hidden access to activity in the Security Operations Center below. Through a reflection in the window, he saw an image of Molina standing behind him.

“I can't understand Farsoun's inability to capture Agent Winters,” he said with disgust. “He was an incompetent idiot.”

“Farsoun has been eliminated,” Molina assured.

“But Winters hasn't. And now you have been unable to bring his daughter to me. I do not understand that either. I should have gone after her myself.”

“She had help from her father,” Molina replied. “She had to, or she never would have escaped from that apartment.”

“You have to fix this,” Tejada said with contempt.

“I have a plan in place.”

Tejada nodded toward the large video screens that occupied the wall of the op center. A bevy of analysts stared up at the larger-than-life pictures he was seeing—one of the Conte woman, petite but poised. One of Maria, caught by Molina's camera as she exited a restaurant with her thick hair tossed by the sea breeze and her brown eyes intelligent and shimmering. And a the third of the fortyish man
he'd seen in the previous photos—the man who was aging well despite a peppering of gray in his hair.

“This is your plan?” Tejada asked. “Another manhunt?”

“An expanded one,” Molina said.

Tejada heard the resentment in his voice. “Go ahead,” he said. “Explain it to me.”

“We have been creating a plausible version of the facts to support our search effort.”

Tejada shrugged. “Mere notice that we at Catalonia need to apprehend suspects should be enough to motivate the Barcelona police.”

“We need cooperation at higher levels of government, perhaps even internationally before we're through, and they are going to require an explanation.”

“And what is that ‘explanation'?”

Molina went to the door and put his hand on the knob. “You are about to see. This is why I asked you to come here.”

Tejada nodded, still watching only Molina's reflection in the glass. Molina seemed to be waiting for more and when nothing came, he jerked open the door and disappeared. Tejada knew he had angered him, but he no longer cared. He wanted this done, or he would suffer Abaddon's wrath.

Below, Molina moved among the analysts bent over their laptops to take his place at a microphone on the main operator's console. The microphone was for Tejada's benefit. Molina's unamplified voice could be heard for several city blocks if necessary. Without preamble, he launched into the “explanation.”

“Yesterday morning, Maria Winters, the woman you see here, tried to murder
Señor
Tejada in his home.”

Tejada couldn't hear the gasps from the staff but he could see the
expressions on their faces. Under other circumstances, he would have found it laughable.

“Apparently she was aided in that effort by her father, John Winters, the man pictured here,” he said, gesturing to a screen on the wall. “Winters is a United States Secret Service agent. He is armed and well trained. It is not clear whether the plot to kill
Señor
Tejada was his, hers, or both, or whether the Secret Service itself is involved. As for Sophia Conte—the other woman pictured here—she is John Winters' partner and do not be deceived by her size. She has proven herself dangerous on more than one occasion.”