The Eighth Day (15 page)

GLORIA SANTIAGO, SPERLING’S assistant comptroller, was getting more and more frustrated. Her computer was not cooperating today. She had entered the same numbers into a spreadsheet three times already, only to have the computer lock up when she tried to print it. The only way out was powering down. To her dismay, every time she rebooted, the spreadsheet was gone. This time, at 5:30, she saved it every step of the way.

“Gloria, why are you still here?” her boss asked on his way out the door.

“Dave, this friggin’ computer is going out the goddamn window in a minute.”

“Are you not thinking pleasant thoughts? You know these things read your mind and if you don’t think pleasant thoughts they can be vindictive.”

“Dave, please, I am in no mood.”

“Sorry, what’s the problem?”

“I have been working all day on this spreadsheet for the meeting tomorrow and this piece of crap keeps losing it.”

“Did you save it?”

She turned and shot him a look that could burn out his eyeballs.

And when he tried the spreadsheet himself, he had no better luck. Finally, she resolved to do it by hand.

Dave patted her on the shoulder. “Your dedication will pay off someday, Gloria. Try not to work too late.”

She watched him leave, muttering under her breath, “Try not to drink too much.”

At 8:50, she was still standing in front of the Xerox machine, breaking company policy. One good thing about working late was there were no pansies around to object to secondhand smoke.

One floor below, under truck number seven in the loading bay, the kitchen timer counted down the ten remaining seconds.

As she took a drag from her third and final cigarette of the night, the ash fell onto the sixth copy of the handwritten spreadsheet.

As she bent over slightly to blow the ash off the sheets in the sorter, the whole machine suddenly rose up, lifting her off her feet. Her confusion lasted less than a tenth of a second as her back met the ceiling and her spine snapped. She and the machine continued their ascension through the roof, which had already ruptured from the blast wave that instantaneously took out the entire front of the building.

The first responding fire units were warned that this was an industrial site containing level-four contaminants. As the pumper truck rolled with its siren wailing, Captain Horace Kelso read the MSDS on file for the plant. This Material Safety Data Sheet indicated they were speeding toward a potentially deadly scenario: vaporized Translyte, a coolant for high-voltage transformers, one of its constituents being PCBs.
Nasty shit
, he thought as he remembered, back when he was a lieutenant, how just a few gallons of this chemical, inside one overheated transformer located under Hempstead Turnpike, turned a whole square mile into “no man’s land” for twelve hours. This place manufactured the shit and could have tons of the stuff.

As his rig approached the scene, he witnessed something that scared the bejesus out of him. People were strewn all over the street. These spectators who were attracted to the fire had been overcome by something. Judging from the pale color of their faces and foam around their mouths, it was definitely airborne.

He picked up the radio mic to speak to the men in the trucks with him and those heading in. “Full contamination area. All units. This is a hot zone! Respirators only. Repeat. Full contamination!” His men had drilled for disasters such as this since 1974, when three firefighters died because a garage burnt down igniting some barrels of similar crud.

His next call was to Suffolk Fire Control. It would be their job to evacuate the area.
This is going to be a big mess
, he thought as he put on his respirator mask.

The e-mail received by the FBI five minutes earlier was short and to the point. “Sperling. Ultimate.”

Captain Kelso was surprised when the man in the suit flashed an FBI ID card, informing him that they would be taking over the crime scene investigation from here.
How did they know it was a crime this fast? A federal crime no less!
This news came to him two minutes after his men, having worked in full turnout gear plus respirators, finally managed to snuff out the chemically fed blaze after an arduous nine-hour battle. Being too tired to argue, he watched as the thirty or so prissy Feds—all clean, rested, and gas mask equipped—poked, prodded, and assessed the still-smoldering scene.

General Nandeserra would just as soon have lined these clerics up against a wall and shot them, but since they were the main source of funding for his nation’s military, he patiently suffered through all their ill-informed questions.

“Allah be praised, is this the time in which to strike at America?” The mullah from the mountains asked as if he already decided it wasn’t.

“Sheik, the timing has never been more perfect. America is in a state of confusion. They have no idea who is attacking them. For years we have waited, waited for the opportunity to weaken her without unleashing her wrath upon us. Samovar is ready to strike. In the current confusion, they will never know it was our initiative.”

“How can you be certain of that, General?”

“Samovar has been in training for years. There is no physical evidence or monetary connection linking Samovar to us in any way.”

“Are you sure he can carry out this mission?”

That question set off an alarm inside the General’s head. He was very careful to never let on to all but his most trusted men that Samovar was not the name of an operation but that of one single assassin. This mullah had methods of intelligence that reached into his core of officers. He made a mental note to find out who the traitor was later.

“How do you mean?” It made no sense attempting to deny that this was, in fact, one man. Maybe it would go unnoticed by the others.

“Men usually chosen for these missions, Allah be praised, are young and full of rage and spirit. I suspect your man is more mature, softer then. Will he be able to carry out the mission? It is plain that a young man straight from the Madrasasas is blinded to the corruption of the west; all he sees is his glory before God, but an older man might be seduced by its devil’s comforts.”

“I do not dispute your words, Sheik, but the man was selected by Allah himself, as he lost a great deal in the American missile attack…both his brother and mother. His spirit is beyond question, and his resolve is that of the great Jihad, Allah be praised.”

“Very well, General. How soon will he strike?”

“We have one last operational detail to conclude after which it would only be a matter of hours.”

They seemed to arrive at a consensus throughout the room. The General had addressed and satisfactorily eliminated all of their concerns. Reading this on their faces, he requested to be excused.

A nod from the Sheik bid him leave. As a servant opened the door, the mullah asked one last question, “General, there will be no loose threads then?”

“Absolutely none.”

“Allah be praised.”

As Taggert entered his office, he was startled to find a mini construction crew there. Dennis was in the center of the activity, instructing the foreman.

“What’s all this?” the young entrepreneur said.

“Phase one of keeping my end of the deal.”

Taggert surveyed the room as huge thick panes of glass were installed inside the grand windows of his office.

“Two-inch-thick laminated acrylic, sixty-four sandwiched layers, optically clear, but with the stopping power of an ought 30-30 at ten yards.”

Taggert took it all in, then focused on his desk. “Hey, where’s my Vaccaro chair?”

“High-back, Kevlar, and armor steel-plated. Can stop a .38 at point-blank range. Same kind the president uses in the oval office.” Dennis knocked on the back of the regrettably conventional-looking leather chair.

“Mr. Mallory, I guess I am going to have to get used to you protecting me.” Taggert tried the chair on for size. He found it vastly different from his Vaccaro, the one he had custom-made by the Italian designer who had also been commissioned by Ferrari. “You can sleep in this chair,” he said, surprised, and then swiveled around. “The president, you say?” He thought about this for a second and smiled. “How much is all this costing me?”

“One hundred forty-seven thousand, plus four hundred and twenty thousand for your new Mercedes.”

“Let me guess, bulletproof?”

“Grenade-proof!”

“What color?”

“Same as your old one, Midnight Blue.”

“Good catch, Dennis!” Taggert grinned, then scrunched into his new chair, a content, safe expression washing over his face.

Five men appeared at the doorway. Dennis waved them in. “Mr. Taggert, here is your security detail. These men have all worked with me on the job and, I assure you, are still the finest of New York City’s finest. They will alternate shifts and be your bodyguards twenty-four hours, seven days a week.”

Miles stood and, like an inspector general, worked his way down the line of armed nursemaids. Dennis reflected on how well this had all gone so far and how hopeful Cynthia had been these last couple of days. His wife was now seeing doctors who weren’t even listed, thanks to Taggert’s powerful friends and connections. She was amazed to share a waiting room with Ivana Trump. Dennis knew that even rich people died, but he suspected they didn’t die as often as those reliant on HMOs. Many years before, he made a promise before God and all their family and friends that he would love, honor, and protect her, and he was damned determined that death would not part them, at least not yet.

After work, Dennis made a pit stop at Harrigan’s, his old stomping ground down from his precinct. Jack Flanagan was there, in his usual booth.

“Saints preserve us! If it isn’t Dennis Mallory come all the way from retirement to hobnob with the working stiffs.”

“Semiretired, you old leather-pounder,” Dennis said as he patted Jack on the shoulder and slid into the booth.

“Semi?”

“Picked up a little job on my days off.”

Jack stopped mid-swallow, “Hey, wait, you’re off everyday.”

“See how bad I need your help.”

“What’s this going to cost me?”

“Not a thing, just a little time … and maybe a phone call or two, some lab time. Nothing much.”

“What kind of job?” Jack asked suspiciously.

“Now keep this under your hat, will ya?”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Yeah, around the rim of that glass.”

“If I remember correctly, you threw back a few with the best of them, old friend.”

“I made a deal with some big shot named Miles Taggert who runs a computer company. Seems he’s been getting some threats and with what’s happening lately, let’s just say he wants a little added protection.”

“So are you working for him?”

“Security consultant. Ain’t too bad. Got Benton and Davis and those guys full-time jobs bird-dogging him twenty-four/seven. I get to play with all the new gadgets and what I say goes. Pretty good deal overall.”

“So what are you pulling in from this?”

“Oh, we got a trade deal of sorts going.”

Dennis reached into his sport coat pocket and produced a second threat letter that Taggert received earlier that morning. He handed the evidence, now sealed in a plastic bag, to Jack. “Could you run this through forensics?”

“Fan mail from some flounder?” Jack said, invoking an old cartoon line.

“Huh?”

“Forget it, Bullwinkle. What are we looking for?”

“Unfortunately, it’s been touched by Taggert, but only him.” He placed a fingerprint card in front of Jack. “Here’s Taggert’s set. I just tightened the mail handling so this won’t happen again. I’m hoping to find the perpetrator’s latent print. Also do a run on the paper, the writing, anything you can offer.”

“Give me two days. I’ll send it in as one of my sleeping cases.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

“How’s the wife?”

“Not so good. They found a thing in her head that could ... that could take her away from me.”

“Ah, Jesus, Dennis. Cynthia’s a saint, a regular saint. She don’t deserve that, not after all she’s been through. How’s she taking it?”

“She’s got more balls than you, me, and the whole squad put together. But that’s the trade deal. I got this billionaire to pull all kinds of strings to get her some of that real top-shelf medical treatment. All I got to do is make sure his secret admirer never gets any closer than this letter.”

“I’ll run it first thing in the morning. Tell Cynthia that Joanie’s and my thoughts and prayers are with her.”

“Your piece is cut,” Wally informed Carly with cold indifference.

“What do you mean?”

“I got two packages and three talking heads on the chemical factory in Long Island. You’re bumped.”

“But Wally, don’t you see? This is exactly the perfect segue into my piece. What did that factory make?”

“Chemicals that help eggheads make black holes. Or so the propaganda goes.”

“Exactly. That’s science, Wally, and my story is about how the number one science man is investigating. It’s the perfect sidebar.”

“Sidebar is a print term. In TV we call that …er… well, I don’t remember. Okay, cut it down to three minutes and I’ll slot you in before we go to the heads. But it better be good and you better have the scoop of all time!”

“Thanks, Wally; you won’t be sorry.”

“Famous last words,” Wally said to her departing, wiggling backside as he picked up his phone. “Jennie, tell Dave the talking heads are cut back three minutes and tell video tape to expect a roll-in from Carly. Three minutes.”

Carly went to the pressroom and called her cousin, Harry.

“AT&T long lines,” the unemotional voice at the other end spoke.

“Harry Edmonds, please,” Carly requested as she pulled out her cell phone.

“Test, Edmonds,” Harry said from his testers desk in what they called the NOC in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“Harry, Carly. How are you doing, cousin?”

“Not as good as you I see, cuz. Saw you on the news last night. Wooo hooo!”

“You did! Cool, ain’t it?”