The Lie (35 page)

No dislocation in the heavens tonight, Daniel Archer thought, and sensed that everything was going to go
smoothly—that the schematic would prove itself accurate down to the final square inch, and that he would do his own part as
sweetly as he had ever done anything in his life.

Confidence
. When you had it you had it, and it was like waltzing with the angels.

So it came as no real surprise when he worked loose the designated ceiling panel above the number 2 emergency generator and
saw a great cache of
plastique
squeezed up there among the pipes, studs, and beams, all that tremendous explosive force just waiting to be fused and armed.

Which Archer now proceeded to do, calmly opening up Dr. Nicholas Vorelli’s beautiful leather attaché case and taking out the
required fuses, detonators, wires, and battery-powered clocks, and setting up two of everything just to have a backup circuit
ready in case something went wrong with the first.

Checking the time, Archer set both circuits to detonate at noon, exactly nine hours and twenty minutes away.

He tightened a final connection, went over each step once more in his mind, and replaced the ceiling panel so perfectly that
it was all but invisible as a separate unit. Then he counted his tools and leftover material as he returned them to the attaché
case. Nine pieces out, nine pieces back in.

Everything was in order. It had to be. Tonight he could do no wrong. His clocks silently tracked the time.

A
T
2:40
A.M.
Holy Cross General was bathed in an almost mystical, haunted quiet.

In room 561 of the Allstein Pavilion, President Jimmy Dunster’s patched-together body drifted in drugged sleep. He was dreaming
his wife came to visit him, but when he reached for her with miraculously tube-free arms, he awoke alone.

He must have been moaning, because he heard the young man in the other bed softly asking him something. Dunster didn’t answer.

“Are you all right, Mr. President?”

Paulie Walters’s question was louder now, more insistent, and this time Jimmy Dunster answered.

“No. I’m not… all right,” he murmured.

“Do you want a doctor or a nurse, sir?”

“They… can’t help me.”

Paulie was silent. He studied the pink-and-white glow of the monitors on the ceiling.

“Beating yourself can’t help either, Mr. President,” he said finally. “That only makes it worse.”

“How… can anything make it worse? If you licked… my heart… it would… poison you.”

Then Jimmy Dunster’s drugs, being more forgiving than his heart, let him drift off again.

Anna entered the fifth-floor corridor of the Allstein Pavilion at 3:04
A.M.
dressed in her starched nurse’s uniform.
For added authenticity, she had draped a stethoscope about her neck and carried a tray of medical material covered by a clean
white cloth.

She had entered through an emergency door at the east end of the pavilion, which allowed her to approach room 561 without
having to pass either the nursing station or the elevators.

Alone in the corridor, Anna moved quickly and silently on rubber-soled shoes. She slowed as she neared the open doorways of
the two rooms directly opposite the president’s closed door. Passing them on a practice run earlier, she had spotted the four
Secret Service agents posted inside; two in each room. Their hospital gowns disguised nothing. Seen naked, they could not
have been anything but what they were. The two guards disguised as orderlies were out of sight at the moment in the supply
room. Their cart was still in the corridor.

She paused just before reaching the first of the two open doorways. Holding the tray with her left hand, she unfolded the
cover cloth with her right.

Two pistols lay side by side. One was a 9-millimeter automatic lengthened by a silencer. The other weapon fired instant-acting
tranquilizer pellets that could put out a two-hundred-pound man for a full half hour. Anna took pains never to kill unnecessarily.
Not for any heavenly rewards; it was just her way.

When she felt herself ready, Anna moved into the first room so quickly that neither of the two men inside were aware of her.
Until the soft hiss of the tranquilizer gun’s initial firing caused the agent sitting in a chair to glance up from his newspaper.

His partner, reclining on his bed and caught squarely in his chest by the pellet, was unconscious before he could glance anywhere.

The man in the chair was still trying to understand what was happening when a second pellet put him out.

Start to finish, the entire action had taken precisely eight seconds.

Anna looked across the corridor at room 561. The two times she had walked past it the door had been closed. It remained shut.

She took four quick steps to the next open doorway and ducked in. The two Secret Service agents sat in chairs facing her.
They had magazines in their hands. One rose instantly, reaching for his holster. Anna fired a pellet and he dropped back into
his chair. His partner was dozing over his magazine and Anna put him out before he awoke.

That left just the president’s room and the guards in the supply room.

One problem with the president’s situation was that since Anna had never been able to look inside room 561, she had no way
of knowing what she would find when she opened the door. Would there be two men guarding the president, or just one? If there
were two, where would they be positioned, and which man would it be best to hit first?

In her favor, of course, would be their initial impression of her as a legitimate staff nurse coming in to treat her patient.
By the time they saw her piece, she would have them both down. Then she would simply finish the president and be gone.

First she had to knock out the two guards in the supply room.

They were sitting on folding chairs, talking, when she walked in and squeezed off two more pellets. The men glanced up but
never saw anything more than her breasts.

E
VERY SILENCE HAS ITS OWN PITCH
, and the less than perfect silence in room 561 was no exception.

Paulie Walters lay on his hospital bed listening to it. He heard the faint hum of Jimmy Dunster’s monitors along with his
heavy breathing. He heard the sigh of an air conditioner and the gurgle of plumbing between the walls. He heard a metallic
click that seemed to come from somewhere along the corridor.

A door latch, Paulie thought.

But surely not here.

As part of his own personally instituted security measures, no one—not doctors, nurses, not even the Secret Service—were to
so much as turn the knob on the president’s door without first knocking and identifying themselves to Paulie.

Then the door abruptly opened without either a knock or an identifying voice and he saw a tall fair-haired nurse enter the
room.

The nurse was carrying a tray and for a moment she and Paulie locked eyes above it.

“Weren’t you told to knock and…”

Paulie never finished the question. He glimpsed a pistol coming from the tray in the nurse’s hand and dived off the bed, hands
stretching but not quite able to make it to the gun itself, reaching only the near edge of the tray. He knocked it upward
just as the first, soft, hissing shot from the tranquilizer gun went off, deflecting the pellet into the ceiling.

Paulie’s body hit the nurse and took her down with the gun still in her hand, trying for another shot at him. He grabbed her
wrist and twisted until the weapon fell free. The woman was surprisingly strong. They lay on the floor squirming together
like two lovers, looking into each other’s eyes.

Anna spat straight into Paulie’s face and kneed him hard in his groin. Paulie gasped. Enough, he thought.

Drawing back his fist, he slammed it into the side of her jaw and felt her go limp under him.

Off to his right, he heard the president murmur something.

Paulie glanced toward Jimmy Dunster’s bed and saw him staring down at them.

“What… are you doing, son?” Dunster whispered. “Fucking… my goddamn… nurses?”

Paulie managed a faint smile. “Not this one, sir.”

Then grabbing some surgical tape, Paulie bound and gagged the unconscious woman and lifted her onto his bed. He checked her
weapons and saw that the pistol she had been aiming at him fired only tranquilizer pellets. The other piece, obviously intended
for the president, was a 9-millimeter automatic with a silencer.

Great. An assassin with scruples.

Paulie saw the president watching him. “I’ll be back in a minute, sir. There are things I have to do.”

“You mean… besides save… my idiot… life?”

Paulie looked at him.

“Don’t worry,” said the president. “I… appreciate it.”

The man was definitely getting better, thought Paulie, and crossed the corridor to check on the six Secret Service agents.

No surprises. At least they were alive.

Using a phone in one of the security rooms, Paulie woke Tommy Cortlandt at his hotel. “Everything is all right,” he told the
CIA director. “But you’d better get down here fast with some fresh people.”

“Another try?”

“Yes.”

Cortlandt grunted. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Paulie got in touch with the chief of nursing, sketched in the bare facts, and swore her to silence. One good thing about
Germans. They carried out orders.

Tommy Cortlandt arrived with six new agents and had them take over the president’s security.

Only then did Paulie bring Anna into a prepared room at the far end of the corridor. He took the CIA director in with them
and closed the door. Anna was conscious but still bound and gagged as Paulie sat her in a chair.

“Who is she?” asked Cortlandt.

“You know as much as I do,” answered Paulie. “I gagged her while she was out and kept it that way. I wanted you with me on
this from her first word.”

Staring at Anna, Cortlandt was silent.

Paulie removed her gag, wiped a spot of dried blood from the corner of her mouth, and stepped back.

“What’s your name?” he asked in German.

“Anna.” She stared at both men—Paulie, still in his hospital gown and robe, and Cortlandt, dark-suited and distinguished.
“And you two gentlemen?” Her reply was in good English.

“This is Mr. Tom Cortlandt,” said Paulie, switching to English. “And I’m John Hendricks.”

Anna turned to Cortlandt. “I thought I recognized you, sir. The director himself. I’m honored.” Her voice was mocking. “Now
if I can just have a drink of water,” she said, “and my hands untied, perhaps we can start talking.”

Paulie freed Anna’s wrists while Cortlandt brought a glass of water from the bathroom. Then they watched as she rubbed some
circulation back into her hands and carefully sipped her water.

“All right, who are you?” said the CIA director.

“No one as important as you, Mr. Director. Although I was once a better than fair tennis player until I got bored.”

“And now?”

Anna gravely contemplated the question. “Now I just do
everything possible to avoid growing bored enough to blow my brains out.”

“Is that the reason you were going to kill the president?” said Paulie.

“It was
one
of the reasons, Mr. Hendricks.”

“And the others?”

“There really was only one other. A hundred thousand dollars.”

Paulie and Cortlandt exchanged glances.

“You sell the president pretty cheaply,” said Cortlandt.

“I’m only a poor German girl, Mr. Director. A hundred thousand seems a lot to me. What should I have asked?”

“At least five million.”

Anna stared at Cortlandt. “Seriously?”

“Very seriously. So who paid you the hundred thousand, Anna?” Paulie asked.

Anna’s jaw had swollen, making her smile crooked. “Please don’t rush things, Mr. Hendricks. That information is all I have
left to sell. So let’s talk a little business first.”

Tommy Cortlandt pulled up a chair and sat down knees to knees with her. “You may not have killed anyone,” he told her, “but
you’re still facing up to forty years for intent. So let’s also bear
that
in mind.”

“How could I forget it, Mr. Director? But if you don’t find out fast who was behind these first two attempts on the president’s
life, there’ll be more. And the next one could succeed.”

“
Two
attempts?”

“That explosion at Wannsee was no accident. It was only supposed to look that way so it could be blamed on Professor Mainz’s
carelessness and not the true assassin. But you can judge that for yourself when you hear who hired
me
.”

“Are you implying we know this person?” said Cortlandt.

Anna sipped her water as though it were the finest brandy. “I am.”

“All right, Anna,” said Cortlandt. “What are you looking for from this?”

“What are you offering me, Mr. Director?”

“Depending upon what you finally give us, 1 think I can safely promise you no worse than your usual boredom.”

“No prison term at all?”

“That’s correct.”

“Plus the five million you’ve just convinced me the president’s life is worth?”

Paulie had to struggle to keep a straight face.

Cortlandt gaped at the woman. “Don’t push it, Anna.”

Anna shrugged. “Then President Dunster will probably be dead within days, I’ll be in prison for the next forty years, and
you’ll be remembered as the cheapskate who bargained away the life of the world’s most powerful leader.”

No one spoke for a full half minute.

It was Paulie who finally said, “Come on, Tommy. Her performance alone has to be worth the money.”

“And if she’s playing us like a couple of hooked fish?”

“Then you toss her to the German cops and let her sue for the five million.” Paulie studied the bulge on Anna’s jaw where
his fist had landed. “But my gut feeling is that we’re going to get our money’s worth.”

Tommy Cortlandt turned to Anna. “All right,
Fraulein
. You’ve got it. Now let’s hear what you have for us.”